Glossary

Spam quarantine: meaning and how it works

Spam quarantine is a separate, sealed-off space where suspicious email is held temporarily instead of being delivered to your inbox. The spam quarantine meaning in short: borderline cases wait there until you release them or have them deleted.

By the Mailflux team Published on

Spam quarantine: the meaning

If the filter sees a message as possible spam, phishing or malware, it doesn't go to your inbox but to quarantine. That keeps your inbox clean, while a wrongly blocked mail can still be retrieved.

Explanation

The difference from simply deleting: in quarantine the mail is kept, so you can check whether the filter was right. If there's a legitimate sender among them, you release it and add it to the whitelist so it doesn't happen again. At Mailflux an ML-driven system filters for spam, phishing and malware. You manage senders as described in managing your spam filter and whitelisting senders.

Example

A newsletter from a supplier ends up in the spam quarantine because the filter is unsure. You check the quarantine, recognise the sender, release the mail and add the address to the whitelist. Next time the newsletter comes straight through.

Good to know

It pays to check your quarantine now and then, especially when you're expecting an important message. Filters are good, but no filter is perfect: sometimes a newsletter or a mail from a new customer ends up there by mistake. By then releasing the sender and adding it to the whitelist, you teach the system what you do want to receive, so it chooses better next time.

Related terms

Losing good mail now and then? Managing your spam filter shows you how to release senders.

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