The Help Center spam filter prevents new and edited end-user posts and comments that appear to be spam from being published to your Help Center. Suspicious content is sent to a spam queue where you can review and manage the content.
You must be a Guide admin to enable the spam filter and manage the spam queue.
Enabling the spam filter
The spam filter is enabled by default when you create your Help Center. The spam filter prevents new and edited end-user posts and comments that appear to be spam from being published to your Help Center.
You cannot disable the spam filter, but you can receive notifications when content is sent to the spam queue, and also manage the content that is sent to the spam queue, for example, by marking content as not spam.
Receiving notifications for content in the spam queue
You can subscribe to the spam queue so that you are alerted when there is content in the queue. The queue is checked every two hours, and if there is content in the queue, you will receive an email notification.
To receive notifications for the spam queue
- In Guide, click the Moderate Content (
) icon in the sidebar, then select Spam.
- Click Follow in the upper-right corner.
You will receive a notification if there is content in the spam queue when it is checked every two hours. You will also receive notifications for the content moderation queue, if it's enabled.
Managing your spam queue
From your spam queue, you can delete content, suspend the user, or mark content as not spam. You can bulk delete all the content in the spam queue at the same time if you want to.
If you don't take action on content in your spam queue, it is deleted after 30 days.
- In Guide, click the Moderate Content (
) icon in the sidebar, then select Spam.
- To take action on a post, select the check box next to it and click one of the following:
- Delete to permanently delete the post and remove it from your spam queue
- Not spam to publish the post
- Suspend user to suspend the user and delete all of the user's posts
If you don't take action on content, it is automatically deleted after 30 days.
To manage user content in the content moderation queue, click User content (see Reviewing user content in the content moderation queue).
- In Guide, click the Moderate Content (
) icon in the sidebar, then select Spam.
- Click Delete all spam now.
Updating your custom theme to support the spam filter
If you're using a custom Help Center theme created before April 1, 2014, you need to add some extra styling to your stylesheet to support the spam filter.
- Article page
section
element with class"pending-comments-list"
span
element with class"pending-moderation-comment-badge"
- Question page
section
element with class"pending-answers-list"
span
element with class"pending-moderation-answer-badge"
.pending-moderation-comment-badge, .pending-moderation-answer-badge {
border-style: solid;
border-width: 1px;
border-color: #c7aa2b;
color: #c7aa2b;
padding: 3px5px;
margin-top: 10px;
font-size: 12px;
}
For detailed instructions, see the Customizing the CSS or JavaScript section in Customizing the Help Center.
21 Comments
Hi, I have a starter plan and I keep getting emails directly to my support at mydomain.zendesk.com from Russia. Always the same couple of messages from different email addresses. Anyway to block these?
Hi Jason!
You would want to suspend those users, and any new spam users. You could also change the setting so that users are required to register before submitting a ticket (see here). That should help a lot!
No, no it wouldn't. Bots can easily be configured to register before posting -- we've had a massive problem with that in the last week and have filed a ticket for additional support, but I just wanted to put it out there - the spam filter DOES NOT WORK properly, nor does requiring registration for tickets or community posts.
Just use Zendesk's captcha feature?
I want to know, what does the zendesk done to unti-spam email? and filter the spam email change to tickets?
"Lite" and "Professional" plan users should be able to enable Zendesk's spam filters. Is "lite" that a typo? Should it be "elite" plan level? Or is the spam filter feature available to "essential" plan level Zendesk users? (Reference: https://www.zendesk.com/product/pricing/)
Hey Rebecca -
Welcome to the Zendesk Community!
You are correct, Lite and Professional plan users do have the ability to enable Zendesk's spam filters. It's not a typo; this is a functionality available for Help Centers on all plans. This article is specifically referring to the spam filter for Knowledge Base comments and Community posts.
"Essential" is a plan level for the Support product (which is different from Help Center), but the Essential plan for Support does include a basic Help Center. So... yes, Essential users do have access to the spam filters.
I hope that helps clarify things - let us know if you have further questions.
Hi Nicole,
That's very confusing, actually. I'm unable to find any spam filter options at all, other than to mark individual messages (or thirty messages in bulk at a time) as spam. Meanwhile, I'm receiving 4,000+ spam messages in my Help Center every day. Would you be able to point me in the direction of help with spam filtering?
Thanks.
Hey Rebecca -
Wow, 4,000+ does sound daunting. I have a few questions for clarification so that I can better answer you:
1) What settings/options are you looking for?
To get to the settings you want to go into your Guide Admin panel, and then click the gear icon on the left. From there, you can add words to your content moderation queue, which can be really helpful if a lot of the spam you're getting is the same stuff over and over or has similar words/themes.
2) Is the primary concern spam that is actually getting published in your Help Center, or is it getting caught in the filter and you're wanting to do something different from within the moderation queue? Unfortunately 30 at a time is all the interface allows for, so that's not something you can change. But, if it's not getting caught and is getting published, there are some things you can do to make the filter work better.
3) Are you suspending the users or just deleting the messages?
Suspending a user also deletes all of their messages throughout the entire Help Center, and prevents them from being able to create any new posts. This could help you get rid of things more quickly if you've got spammers who are posting a lot. Say, for example, one account posted 100 spam messages, if you suspend them, it will get rid of all 100 at once. Also, consistently suspending spammers helps cut down on it coming in.
Hi Nicole,
I'm looking for internal spam settings within Zendesk to cut down on spam. After clicking the gear icon, I'm only seeing the following options under manage: people, views, macros, reports, tags, ticket fields. I don't see anything resembling content moderation queue.
Is Help Center the same as Dashboard/tickets requiring your attention? I'm assuming it is. I don't see a spam filter anywhere. All the spam is resulting in thousands of new tickets which all require my attention.
I've been marking spam messages as spam, by selecting Edit 30 ticket(s) --> Mark as spam. Unfortunately it looks like there's a slightly different email address behind each message. Is there a way to block messages coming from a certain domain? It looks like most messages are coming from email addresses @qq.com.
Hey Rebecca -
Yes, you can definitely block messages coming from a single domain by suspending the user.
First, make sure you're in your Guide settings area and NOT in Support - I make that mistake all. the. time. But you won't see these settings if you're in Support. This is the page you're looking for:
Once you've got that properly set up, you'll be able to moderate your spam via the icon that looks like a chat bubble with an exclamation point in it. Here's what the moderation queue will look like:
If you mark a message as spam elsewhere, it will show up in this queue. Then you'll see an option to "Suspend User" and you'll want to use that.
I hope this helps - let me know if you still can't find it and we'll see if there's some other troubleshooting that needs to happen.
My guess is there isn't an option to recover a post that was accidentally included in a bulk update?
Hey Matt! I'm afraid there's no mechanism for that. When I'm checking on our queues I always make sure I sweep for legitimate posts and mark them as "not spam" before permanently deleting anything, and it's worked well so far.
In the admin panel, it says Guide is a Legacy tool. Does that mean it's no longer being supported? Are there plans for newer spam filtering?
Hi Barnaby -
What admin panel are you referring to? Is it the one for your system? It's possible that you are running a legacy version of Guide.
Guide continues to be an actively updated product, and there is ongoing work happening around spam filtering. Sometimes product updates only apply to current versions - I'm checking to see whether the spam filtering upgrades will apply to legacy Guide implementations.
In our subscription list is says "Legacy" under the Plan column for Guide. (see screenshot)
Is spam sent to "suspended", or are suspended tickets different from spam?
Hi Barnaby,
Suspended tickets will only include tickets that Zendesk views as spam. This will be separate from spam in your Help Center. You can find out more about suspended tickets in the following article: Understanding and managing suspended tickets and spam
This article in particular is referring to Spam in your Help Center which will be included in your Guide Legacy plan.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Is there a way to prevent end-users from posting 3rd party links?
Hi Melody -
There's not a functionality to prevent it. I would recommend putting in your TOS or Code of Conduct that posting 3rd party links isn't allowed, and whenever people do it using the post moderation function to reject the comment.
If there are things coming up regularly, you can put any words/terms you see popping up into the keyword moderation filter, so that it'll catch them before the post is live and then you can moderate from there.
Thank you, Nicole!
you're welcome, Melody!
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