Reviewing and managing quarantined messages
When Cleanbox flags an incoming message as suspicious, it doesn’t silently delete it — it holds the message in quarantine so you can decide what happens next. This guide walks you through the quarantine page and shows you how to review, accept, or reject messages.
Accessing quarantine
Click Quarantine in the sidebar. The badge next to the menu item shows how many messages are currently waiting for your review.
What you see
The quarantine page displays a table of all quarantined messages across your aliases and relay addresses. Each row includes:
- A checkbox for bulk selection
- The sender name, email address, and subject line
- The destination alias or relay address the message was sent to
- The spam score assigned by the filter
- When the message arrived
- The number of days until the message expires, based on your plan’s retention period
- Action buttons to accept, reject, or preview the message
Reviewing a message
Click the preview button on any row to open the message preview. Inside the preview you will see:
- The full message content
- A spam report showing which rules triggered and their individual scores
- The raw message headers
This information helps you decide whether a message is legitimate or spam before you take action.
Accepting a message
Click the Accept button (checkmark icon) to release the message from quarantine and deliver it to your inbox. The message status changes to “delivered.”
You can optionally mark the message as “not spam” to help train the filter. Over time this improves detection accuracy for similar messages.
Rejecting a message
Click the Reject button (X icon) to permanently delete the message from quarantine.
Warning: Rejecting a message cannot be undone. Once rejected, the message is permanently deleted.
You can optionally mark the message as “spam” to reinforce the filter’s detection for similar messages in the future.
Bulk actions
When you have many quarantined messages to process, bulk actions save time:
- Use the checkboxes next to individual messages to select them, or click the “select all” checkbox in the table header to select every message on the page.
- Click “Accept Selected” to release all selected messages to your inbox.
- Click “Reject Selected” to permanently delete all selected messages.
Searching
Use the search box at the top of the quarantine page to filter messages by sender or subject. This is helpful when you are looking for a specific message you expect to find in quarantine.
Tips for reducing quarantine volume
If you find that too many legitimate messages end up in quarantine, there are a few things you can do:
- Whitelist trusted senders — set a contact’s state to “whitelisted” so their messages skip quarantine entirely.
- Adjust spam thresholds — fine-tune the spam threshold per alias if the filter is too aggressive for certain addresses.
- Use the spam feedback buttons — marking messages as “spam” or “not spam” trains the filter over time, making it more accurate.
Automatic expiration
Quarantined messages that are never reviewed are automatically deleted after your plan’s retention period expires. The “days remaining” column in the table shows how much time is left for each message. If you want to keep a message, make sure to accept it before it expires.
