Zoho Desk includes both manual and automatic spam management tools to help your support team filter out unwanted contacts and keep your inbox organized. This guide covers how to mark spam contacts, configure automatic detection, and understand the impact of spam classification.
Why this matters
Support teams receive a constant stream of unsolicited emails—newsletters, promotional offers, and phishing attempts—that can bury legitimate customer tickets. Spam contacts may also use social engineering tactics to trick agents into disclosing sensitive information or creating fake support cases. By managing spam effectively in Zoho Desk, you reduce noise, protect your team from malicious activity, and ensure important customer issues receive prompt attention.
Manual spam management
Step 1. Mark a contact as spam
Log into your Zoho Desk account and navigate to the Customers module. Open the contact you want to flag, then click the More Actions icon (three dots) in the upper-right corner. Select Mark Spam from the dropdown menu, then confirm by clicking Mark As Spam.[5]
Once marked, all current and future tickets from that contact will be labeled as spam and moved to the Spam Contacts view.[5] The contact will also be denied access to your help center, and any tickets shared with other departments will be revoked.[5]
Step 2. Unmark a contact if needed
If you need to reverse a spam classification, go to the Customers module and select Spam Contacts from the left pane under *All Views*. Open the contact, then click Not Spam at the bottom of the Contact Details page. A confirmation window will appear; check Unmark existing tickets from this contact also as spam if you want to restore their previous tickets, then click OK.[5]
Automatic spam detection
Step 3. Enable automatic spam detection
By default, Zoho Desk automatically scans incoming tickets and marks suspicious ones as spam, moving them to the Spam Tickets view so they don't clutter your regular Tickets module.[5] Only administrators or agents with *Manage General Permissions* can adjust this setting.[3]
To configure it, go to Setup > Customization > General Settings, select Contacts from the left panel, and toggle ON the automatic spam detection option.[3]
Step 4. Choose your detection strategy
Zoho Desk offers three automatic spam detection modes:[3]
- Mark only suspicious tickets as spam — Flags questionable tickets but does not mark associated contacts as spam.
- Auto-mark both tickets and contacts as spam — Automatically labels both the suspicious ticket and its contact; all future tickets from that contact will also be marked as spam.
- Mark tickets as spam, but preserve contacts with valid tickets — Marks suspicious tickets as spam without flagging contacts that have other legitimate, non-suspicious tickets.
Select the option that best matches your team's workflow and risk tolerance.
Common pitfalls
When you mark a contact as spam, duplicate contacts sharing the same email address will also be marked as spam.[5] This can inadvertently block legitimate users if email addresses are shared or if your system has duplicate records. Review your contact database before bulk-marking to avoid false positives.
Automatic spam detection relies on pattern analysis and scoring; some legitimate tickets may occasionally be flagged depending on their content or sender characteristics. Monitor the Spam Tickets view regularly and unmark any false positives to keep your system accurate.
What to check
- Verify the contact is truly spam — Before marking, confirm the contact is not a legitimate customer or partner using a shared email address.
- Review the Spam Contacts view weekly — Check for false positives and unmark legitimate contacts that were incorrectly flagged by automatic detection.
- Confirm ticket access is revoked — After marking a contact as spam, verify they cannot access your help center or submit new tickets through the self-service portal.
---
*This article is provided by Beam Help — independent expert support for Zoho. We are not official Zoho support.*