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The Screener for businesses

Every company mailbox has the same Screener as a personal one: mail from anyone who has never written to that mailbox before waits in the Screener until its owner decides, once per sender, whether they get in. Cold email, list blasts and "just bumping this" never reach the inbox. The basics are in The Screener; this page covers what's different inside an organization.

Colleagues skip the Screener

Inside an organization, mail between members skips the Screener — a colleague writing to you for the first time lands straight in your inbox, and you land in theirs. Whichever of their addresses they write from counts, as long as both of you are active members of the same organization.

This is the "Trust teammate mail" setting under the console's Mail settings — "Mail from teammates skips the screener. Everyone in the organization can see this setting." It is on by default and can be changed by Owners, Admins and anyone with Manage organization mail settings. Every member sees its state in their own Mail settings: "Teammate mail skips the screener." or "Teammate mail goes through your screener like any other sender."

What it does and doesn't do:

  • Turning it on approves colleagues in each other's Screeners as their mail arrives — and catches up on mail already waiting: "Catching up existing teammate mail…" moves colleagues' held messages from the Screener into the inbox.
  • Turning it off stops future automatic approvals. Nothing is revoked — colleagues already approved stay approved.
  • Your own decisions win. If you've denied or blocked a sender, the setting never overrides that.
  • A forged colleague is still screened. A message that claims to be from a colleague but fails DMARC (a possible spoof) goes through the Screener like any stranger's.
  • It's per organization. Members of a different organization you belong to are colleagues there, not here.

Customers, suppliers and strangers

Everyone outside the organization is screened exactly as on a personal mailbox: their first message waits for approval; approving them once lets them in for good; screening them out is silent. Writing to someone first counts as approving them, so replies to your own outreach arrive without a stop. Each company mailbox keeps its own Screener decisions — approving a customer in yours doesn't approve them in a colleague's.

Two senders on your own domain are approved for you automatically: SingleSign's own account mail, and postmaster@yourcompany.com for the admin who added the domain, so the signed test message that proves your mail path lands in the inbox (see Domains and DNS records).

What admins can and cannot see

Organization admins administer mailboxes; they never look inside them.

They can see — from member details and the Mailboxes section — each company mailbox's address and aliases, how much storage it uses, whether it's active, suspended or deleting, and how many app passwords and sessions it has. They can reset that sign-in security, and they can see the "Trust teammate mail" setting and who changed it (the audit log records "turned teammate screener trust on").

They cannot see your Screener queue, who you've approved, denied or blocked, your contacts, your tags, or any message — in a company mailbox or, of course, in your personal one. No admin role grants message content, and there's no setting that would; see Admin roles and permissions. Every member's Mail settings carry the same statement: the organization's admins can see storage use and reset sign-in security, and can never read your mail.

Forwarders: support@ expects strangers

A forwarder — support@, sales@, dmca@ and other role addresses with no mailbox behind them — has its own Screener setting, chosen by the admin who sets it up:

  • Inbox (the default) — "Strangers are expected here — first-time senders skip the Screener and land in the inbox; spam and mail that fails authentication are still filtered, and blocked senders stay blocked." Nobody who writes to support@ is added to anyone's contacts, and your own decisions still hold: a sender you've blocked is still discarded, one you've screened out stays out.
  • Screen like personal mail — "First-time senders wait in each recipient's Screener until that person lets them in, exactly as mail to their own address would."

Every message that arrived this way carries a "to support@acme.com" chip, and under Settings → Mail → "Addresses that reach you" you can see each forwarder pointed at your mailbox and how it's screened — Straight to inbox or Screened like your mail. Everything else about forwarders is in Forwarders and parked domains.

Last updated: 2026-09-11