I'm trying to clean up a large group of spam messages from various senders that share similar wording, but I only want the rule to apply to messages sent to specific people. The rule is configured so that messages addressed to person A or person B, containing one of several specific text patterns, should be permanently deleted without notifying anyone.
However, I'm still receiving approval-request emails for many of these messages, even after confirming that approval was disabled. Some messages that were blocked by the user also appear to generate approval requests. Are approval actions evaluated before sender blocking, or could another mail rule be causing this behavior?
3 Answers
That rule shouldn’t send approval requests if its only action is permanent deletion. The most likely explanation is that another rule is matching the same messages, or that the rule’s conditions and priority aren’t behaving the way you expect. Check the complete rule list, processing order, exceptions, and audit or message-trace details to identify which rule actually generated the approval.
Blocking a sender and processing mail-flow rules are separate mechanisms, so don’t assume blocking will prevent every other rule from evaluating the message. The trace or rule-logging information should show whether the approval is coming from this rule, another rule, or a moderation setting elsewhere.
Rebuilding the rule may be worthwhile if the interface shows the new action but the service is still behaving as though the old approval action exists. Before deleting it, save the long list of text conditions somewhere. Also consider whether a broader filtering approach would be easier to maintain, since matching lots of common spam phrases can become fragile and generate false positives.
That was my first thought too, but I have only about eight rules and none of the others request approval. This rule originally did require approval, though, and I changed it to permanently delete without notification. I’m considering deleting and recreating it in case the old action is still being applied.