Understanding suspended tickets and spam

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<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">Support requests sent to Zendesk Support can be suspended or rejected. Suspended tickets are often, but not always, spam. This article explains what suspended tickets are and your options for managing them.</p>
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<p id="docs-ai-summary-toggle">Summary: <span id="up-triangle">◀</span><span id="down-triangle">▼</span></p>
<p id="docs-ai-summary-content">Suspended tickets are support requests set aside for review, often due to spam or unverified senders. You can manage these tickets by reviewing them regularly before they auto-delete after 14 days. Factors like email authentication, submission restrictions, and allowlist/blocklist settings influence suspension rates. Implementing a review process helps balance spam prevention with workload, ensuring valid tickets aren't missed while filtering out unwanted messages.</p>
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<p class="p">Support requests sent to Zendesk Support can be suspended or rejected. Suspended tickets are
often, but not always, spam. This article explains what suspended tickets
are and your options for managing them.</p>
<p class="p">This article discusses the following topics:</p>
<div class="p">
<ul class="ul" id="topic-1__ul_wx1_lwd_k1b">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_vpr_1sp_nj">What are suspended
tickets?</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_ywn_v2j_dwb">What causes tickets to be suspended?</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_ewp_qrl_zsb">What factors
influence suspended tickets</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_vpr_1sp_nj">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">What are suspended tickets?</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">In most cases, when an end user submits a support request, the request
becomes a new ticket or adds a comment to an existing ticket. In
certain cases, the ticket may be suspended. Suspending a ticket
means putting it aside for further review. It's not necessarily
spam, but it's not a ticket in Support yet. It remains in limbo
until somebody reviews it and decides whether to accept or reject
it.</p>
<p class="p">Suspended tickets are collected in a system-generated view. On
non-Enterprise plans, agents must have permission to view all
tickets to access the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408893392922#topic_ukg_lbf_kd" target="_blank">Suspended tickets view</a>
and its tickets. On Enterprise plans, agents must be in a <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882153882" target="_blank">custom role</a> with
permission to view, recover, and delete suspended tickets to access
the Suspended tickets view and its tickets.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image" id="topic_vpr_1sp_nj__image_ik1_qkb_cdc" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/suspended_tickets_view.png" width="200"></p>
<p class="p">As a best practice, you should <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408832102042" target="_blank">review suspended tickets
frequently</a>. If nobody reviews a suspended ticket,
it's automatically deleted after 14 days.</p>
<p class="p">Sometimes, rather than being suspended, a support request is rejected. A
rejected support request is not kept for further review, and it
can't be recovered. </p>
<div class="p">The following are common reasons why a support request is rejected:<ul class="ul" id="topic_vpr_1sp_nj__ul_dky_pnn_be">
<li class="li">If an email is rated a 99% or higher chance of being
spam, it's rejected. If the rating is below 99%, the
email is suspended to give you a chance to confirm
it's really spam.</li>
<li class="li">You blocked the email address or domain. See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886840986" target="_blank">Using the allowlist
and blocklist to control access to Zendesk
Support</a>.</li>
<li class="li">The email was sent by an automated system (for example,
a non-delivery notification email).</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested1" id="topic_ywn_v2j_dwb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title3">What causes tickets to be suspended?</h2>
<div class="body">
<div class="p">A ticket can be suspended for several reasons, including:<ul class="ul" id="topic_ywn_v2j_dwb__ul_a2k_4fj_dwb">
<li class="li">The email is rated as spam. Spam is the most common
cause for suspension.</li>
<li class="li">The sender is not allowed to create or update a ticket.
For example, the email is from an unregistered user
when you require users to register.</li>
<li class="li">The sender is not a person.</li>
<li class="li">The email failed <a class="xref" href="https://dmarc.org" target="_blank">DMARC
authentication</a>, which Zendesk uses to
authenticate agent users.</li>
<li class="li">An anonymous user submits a support request (applicable
only to <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408881989018" target="_blank">open support
instances</a>).</li>
</ul>
For a full list of suspension causes, see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828416282" target="_blank">Causes for ticket
suspension</a>.</div>
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</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title4" class="topic nested1" id="topic_ewp_qrl_zsb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title4">What factors influence suspended tickets</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">For security purposes, Zendesk automatically scans tickets to identify
malicious content. However, the way you configure your account also
influences how many emails are suspended. </p>
<div class="p">If you're trying to balance the spam-prevention efforts with the workload
of reviewing the suspended ticket queue, consider the following:<ul class="ul" id="topic_ewp_qrl_zsb__ul_ksk_p5l_zsb">
<li class="li">Who do you <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883052442#topic_vbt_qsv_kj" target="_blank">allow to submit
tickets</a>?<p class="p">If you have <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408893912986" target="_blank">restricted ticket
submission</a> to only users with approved
email addresses or <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883658906" target="_blank">closed ticket
submission</a> to everyone except the users
you've added, you'll see more suspended tickets
than you would if you <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408881989018" target="_blank">allowed anyone to
submit tickets</a>.</p>
</li>
<li class="li">Have you enabled <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408821985818" target="_blank">DMARC, SPF, or DKIM
authentication for incoming emails</a>?<p class="p">Each
of these methods works differently to detect spam
and spoofed emails, so they do result in more
suspended tickets, but they also add a layer of
security to the inbound emails that generate
tickets.</p>
</li>
<li class="li">Are you using the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886840986" target="_blank">allowlist and
blocklist</a>?<p class="p">Emails submitted by end users
on the blocklist are suspended by default, but you
can configure it so that they are rejected. The
allowlist specifies who is exempt from the
blocklist rules as well as bypassing some other
standard causes for email suspension. </p>
<p class="p">If
you find that some of your security settings are
resulting in too many suspended tickets, look for
patterns of similarity to the valid tickets that
are being suspended. Then use the allowlist and
blocklist to permit emails that match that
pattern.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="p">We recommend <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408832102042" target="_blank">implementing a process for
reviewing suspended emails</a> frequently. Any emails
that remain in the suspended tickets queue for 14 days without
review are automatically deleted.</p>
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