# Suppression

**Suppression** is a standing block on contacting one address or number. It is checked before every outbound message, it outranks anything that would otherwise permit the send — a rule, an [approval](/docs/glossary/approval/), an allowance with room left — and where its state cannot be read, the send is refused rather than attempted.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/inbox, #/prospects
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/suppression/

## Where a suppression comes from

| Origin | What happened | Can it be lifted? |
|---|---|---|
| Unsubscribe | The recipient asked to stop receiving promotional contact | By them, or on their request |
| Complaint | They marked a message as spam, and the provider told you | Not casually — the complaint is the point |
| Hard bounce | The address does not exist | By correcting the address, which is a different address |
| Provider suppression | The sending provider refuses the address on its own account | Only at the provider |
| [Do not contact](/docs/glossary/dnc/) | A person decided this contact is off limits entirely | By a person, deliberately |

The origin is stored with the entry, and it is the first thing to read when a send is refused. *This address bounced once* and *this person told you to stop* both prevent a message, and treating the second as though it were the first is how a business gets itself reported.

## It outranks everything, including permission

In outreach eligibility, a suppressed contact blocks every channel at once — not only the one the block arrived on. The reasoning is that jurisdiction rules describe what a stranger may be sent; a suppression is this particular person having already said no to you. Nothing about being permitted to email a business in general answers that.

The ordering matters in the ordinary send path too. An approved reply to a suppressed recipient fails at the moment of approval rather than waiting in a queue, and the reason shown is the suppression with its origin. That is deliberate: a person who has just approved something is the right person to learn immediately that it cannot go.

> **Note** Where the suppression state cannot be verified at all, a live send is refused. Failing closed on this question costs a delayed message; failing open costs a message to somebody who asked not to receive one.

## Suppression, blocking, and switching a channel off

**A block directive** — Held in [memory](/docs/glossary/memory/) against a contact as a tagged entry — deliberately not a column, so it holds across channels and across future conversations. It stops Connect acting; suppression stops the message.
**[Autonomy](/docs/glossary/autonomy/) set to off** — A rule about a whole channel in a whole workspace. Suppression is about one recipient, and survives every change to that rule.
**A bounce** — One delivery that failed. A hard bounce creates a suppression; a soft one is a retryable failure and does not — see [bounces](/docs/email/bounces/).
**Deleting the person** — Removing the record removes the history, and the suppression with it. Suppressing is the correct action for *do not write to them*; deleting is for *this record should never have existed*.

The block directive is the one people reach for when they mean suppression and vice versa. If you want Connect to stop talking to somebody, the directive is right; if you want no message to leave for that address whatever anybody approves, suppression is.

## Questions

### Does suppression apply to replies as well as outreach?

The check runs before any outbound message. A suppression that arrived as a promotional opt-out is narrower in intent than a do-not-contact entry, and the origin recorded on it is what distinguishes the two.

### Can the Connect Assistant lift one?

It can lift nothing that amounts to a do-not-contact entry — its rights are deliberately narrower than a person's. Other origins are handled where they are recorded, by somebody who can see why the entry exists.

### Will I be told a send was refused for this reason?

Yes, with the origin. A silent refusal would be the worst version of this: the message does not go, and nobody learns that the customer is waiting for something that will never arrive.

## Related

- [DNC](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/dnc/)
- [Approval](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/approval/)
- [The suppression list](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/suppression-list/)
- [Unsubscribe](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/unsubscribe/)
- [The recipient is suppressed](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/troubleshooting/suppressed-recipient/)

## What this page is based on

- `backend/app/prospect_compliance.py` — suppressed outranks every jurisdiction verdict
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §3 — a block lives as a tagged memory entry, not a column
- `docs-source/facts.py` — CAPABILITY_STATUS suppression_dnc