Emails are sent to your Quarantine mailbox when Microsoft believes it to be a high-confidence spam message or a potential phishing/malicious message. While this detection capability is sometimes incorrect, the Office of Information Security strongly recommends not releasing a message from quarantine unless you are absolutely sure the message was sent to Quarantine by mistake.
Villanova's Office of Information Security continues to strive to protect users against malicious email activity. By using Office 365 quarantine filters, we are able to prevent messages, such as phishing or spam, from penetrating the users email inbox, minimizing malicious attacks.
A Quarantine Notification message is sent once a day notifying the user of any messages that have been placed in quarantine. Mail left in quarantine will automatically be deleted after 15 days. Users are able to check the quarantine portal if they are missing any expected email.
Managing Your Quarantined Email
There are two ways to release legitimate messages that have been mistakenly placed in quarantined:
Microsoft Quarantine Notification Email
A daily email, like the image shown below, requires no action. Emails in quarantine will automatically be deleted after 15 days. If there is an email that requires your attention, please choose the appropriate action.
- Review Message – takes you to the Microsoft 365 Defender Quarantine Portal, where you can manage your quarantined emails.
- Release – message is removed from quarantine and placed in your inbox.
- Block Sender – doing this tells Microsoft that the message spam and will block any further messages received from sender.
- Do nothing – message is left in quarantine and deleted automatically after 15 days or 30 days, depending on why the message was quarantined.
How Messages Appear in the Inbox
Sample Email
Microsoft Quarantine Portal
Quarantined emails can be managed through the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center.
- Go to security.microsoft.com/quarantine.
- Click Review from the left navigation column.
- Click in the Quarantine box.
- Check the email box, select from the options below:
- Release message
- Delete message
- Preview message
- View message header
- Block sender
For more information, visit Microsoft's Find and release quarantined email article.