| Announced on | Phase 1 rollout starts | Phase 1 rollout complete | Future rollouts |
| February 26, 2026 | March 9, 2026 | March 16, 2026 | TBD |
Starting March 9, 2026, to better protect our customers, Zendesk will begin rolling out a new workflow requiring anonymous end users submitting requests through the help center to verify their email address.
This new workflow will be rolled out in phases. Phase 1 will be completed on March 16, 2026, with additional phases to be announced in the future.
This announcement includes the following topics:
What's changing?
Zendesk is rolling out a new workflow to prevent spam attacks for our customers and their users. This new workflow will require anonymous (not signed‑in) end users who submit requests through your help center to verify their email address before an active ticket is created. Submissions from anonymous end users will create a suspended ticket and send a verification email to the email address entered by the requester.
The ticket remains in a suspended state until:
- The end user clicks the verification link in that email (which recovers the suspended ticket).
- Or, an agent manually recovers the suspended ticket on the end user’s behalf by going to Views (
), selecting the Suspended tickets view, selecting the ticket(s) to recover, and then clicking Recover.
Suspended tickets are retained so agents can review and recover legitimate requests while keeping unverified or abusive submissions out of the active ticket queue.
This verification step uses the existing email verification message and link. If you’ve already customized your verification email template, it will be used for the verification email sent after an anonymous request.
This workflow applies to anonymous requests created through:
- Web form
If you’re using autoreplies to recommend articles (legacy) or AI agents to create replies based on help center content, it will no longer show for anonymous requests. - API requests to /api/v2/requests
- Web Widget (Classic)’s offline form
- Support SDK
It does not apply to:
- End users submitting requests while they’re signed in
- Agents creating tickets
- Requests created by sending an email to your support email address
- Requests created through Messaging channels
- API requests to /api/v2/tickets
Why is Zendesk making this change?
Spam attacks are growing more frequent and more intense. Bad actors are using increasingly sophisticated tools to exploit open systems, harass users, and clog support queues. By verifying users at the source, you ensure your security and productivity.
This new workflow helps establish that the person submitting a request actually owns the email address they provided, which is an important signal of legitimacy. Verifying ownership ensures the requester can receive updates about the ticket, and adds friction against automated and spammy submissions so agents spend less time triaging noise.
Together, these improvements increase the reliability of inbound requests, protect agent time, and improve the end‑user experience by making sure genuine requests are delivered and followed up on.
What do I need to do?
This workflow is enabled automatically for your account. To get the most value from this feature, you should consider:
- Notifying your agents and admins about the new suspended ticket flow for anonymous requests, and ensure they know how to recover suspended tickets from the suspended tickets view.
- Reviewing your current workflow for handling suspended tickets to confirm you have a process in place to recover legitimate tickets when appropriate, and consider turning on suspended ticket notifications.
- Reviewing any internal runbooks that describe how anonymous requests are processed.
- Updating any help center articles or other public documentation that addresses your end users and how they submit requests.
If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.