The "Spam Filtering Settings" section of the Inbound service configuration page have been updated with the following changes:

  1. The existing option "Tag Action" has been renamed to "Suspect Mail Action" to better reflect it's purpose: choose the action we apply to mail which our spam engines scored in the "suspect" range -- high enough to be suspicious, but not high enough to reject.

  2. A new option "Spam Mail Action" to choose the action we apply to messages which scored above the "definite spam" threshold. The current behaviour (REJECT) is pre-selected as the default.



Both options - Suspect Mail Action and Spam Mail Action - have the same range of choices:


  • Deliver with Tag: We prefix the subject with *SPAM* and deliver the message to you.
  • Deliver without Tag: We deliver the message to you without a *SPAM* tag added to the subject.
  • Quarantine: The message is placed in your quarantine, which you can access through the Message Logs tool.
  • Reject: The message is rejected and a DSN returned to the sender.  If your service has Smart Quarantine® the sender can opt to manually release the message.


CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS WHEN CHOOSING Deliver with Tag OR Deliver without Tag


Using one of these options:

  • Deliver with Tag: We prefix the subject with *SPAM* and deliver the message to you.
  • Deliver without Tag: We deliver the message to you without a *SPAM* tag added to the subject.

is, without additional receiver-side configuration, effectively the same as turning off spam filtering entirely.


To make effective use of this feature you must implement some form of mail filtering rules in your recipients' mailboxes to segregate the high-scoring mail - for example, placing those messages into a quarantine or Spam folder. The message headers we provide for this purpose, and examples of Microsoft 365 transport rules for the same, can be found in the "Headers and Banners for Phish Protection" KB article.


Additionally, if you use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 as your email provider, it is strongly recommend you follow the relevant guide below to configure your gateway properly: