Whitelist and Blacklist

You can maintain a personal whitelist to make sure that important clients and other contacts will never be blocked (even if they send you spam). You can also maintain a personal blacklist to block messages from specific addresses and servers (even if they send legitimate email).

SpamStopsHere is very effective without whitelisting or blacklisting and we actually discourage their use, as both introduce risk. However, some users have unique or specific needs, so we make whitelisting and blacklisting available to all accounts. Following the guidelines below and using common sense can help minimize the risks.

Whitelist

When it comes to whitelisting the preferred options is whitelisting an IP address. Whitelisting entire domains or even just an email address can be dangerous. When a domain is whitelisted all email from that domain will bypass spam filtering and be delivered directly to the recipient. This could potentially allow spoofed emails to reach your inbox. For example, an email that looks like it is from paypal may actually be from a spammer trying to steal your login info.

Whitelist best practice:

Whitelist an IP address
If an IP address is not an option, whitelist a full email address (example@example.com)

There is a limit of 500 whitelist items, but we recommend having far fewer than that. If you are experiencing false positives, please contact our support team. We might be able to remedy that without you having to resort to extensive whitelisting.

Blacklist

You can create a personal "blacklist" to block email from specific sources. It's useful for blocking email that we would not consider to be "unsolicited bulk email" and thus not blocked globally by us. For example, you might want to block:

Email from someone who is harassing you
Email from recruiters who are trying to steal your employees

Please do not blacklist spam that is making it past our filters. Instead, send a plain text message including the complete headers and message source of the spam to us. That will allow us to investigate why the email made it past our filters and find the best way to prevent it from happening again for not only you, but for the rest of our customers.

Be careful creating a blacklist. You can unintentionally block legitimate email. Also, be careful blacklisting IP addresses (as opposed to email addresses), because that will block the entire mail system (e.g., all email from that organization).Be sure not to blacklist the IP address of a large ISP's mail system that any one of your clients or contacts may be using.

Add or Remove A Whitelist Or Blacklist Entry

Login to the control panel
On left navigation bar under Hosted Services, click SpamStopsHere .
Under Options, click Configurations Options next domain you wish to edit.
Next to the filter (Domain Whitelist or Domain Blacklist), select Edit.
Click Create new entry or Create Multiple new entries.
- You can also Edit existing addresses and IPs.
From the Whitelist by or Blacklist by drop down, select either IP Address or E-mail Address.
Enter or remove the IP Address, Email Address, or Domain you wish to list and specify "Comments" that will help you to remember why this entry was created.
- Enter or remove the IP address of the mail server in dotted decimal notation, e.g. 123.123.123.123.
Once complete, click Create

Adding Multiple Entries

If you are adding multiple entries, a specific format must be followed.

It expects a list, separated by linebreaks in this format:

< Email Address >;< Comment >
< Email Address >;< Comment >

Example:

news@example.com;My Newsletter
store@example.com;My Online Shop

IPs are configured the same way:

< IP Address >;< Comment >
< IP Address >;< Comment >

Example:

10.0.0.1;My Newsletter
10.0.0.2;My Online Shop

We recommend checking into any IP before adding it to your whitelist or blacklist.

Adding Complete Domain

You can whitelist or blacklist all email addresses at a specific domain by specifying just the domain with the at (@) symbol in the "E-mail Address" text box.

For example, to allow any email address from example.com, you would enter "@example.com" (without the quotes).

Adding An IP Address

It is very important to determine the IP address of the organization's mail server to be blacklisted or whitelisted. This can be done by examining the headers of e-mail messages from the organization.

Once you have the IP, go to www.dnsstuff.com and enter the IP address into the IPWHOIS Lookup box. This will tell you what country this IP address is assigned to and sometimes the name of the company that owns the IP address. This will help you decide if you should blacklist or whitelist the IP address.

We recommend that you do not blacklist major mail systems (Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc.) If you do, you will not receive any email from anyone who uses those email services, including many legitimate small businesses.