Administrators configure a spam detection rate to filter out spam. The higher the detection level, the more likely messages will be classified as spam.

The detection level determines how tolerant ScanMail is towards suspect email messages. A high detection level quarantines the most email messages as spam, but it might also falsely identify and quarantine legitimate email messages as spam, creating "false positive" spam mail. A low detection level does not rigorously screen email messages, but does not create many false positive spam messages.