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Setting up a Whitelist

Overview

MailEssentials provides a number of Whitelist modules that allow an administrator to specify which email addresses will not be filtered for spam. A Whitelist is a list of email addresses and domains from which emails are always received.

The Whitelist contains lists of criteria that identify legitimate email. Emails that match these criteria are not scanned by anti-spam filters and are always delivered to the recipient. Emails can be whitelisted using the following criteria:

  • Sender’s email address, email domain or IP address
  • Senders to whom an email was previously sent (Auto-whitelist)
  • Recipient (exclude local email addresses from having emails filtered)
  • Keywords in email body or subject

Important notes

  • The Whitelist and Auto Whitelist features are enabled by default.
  • Using the Auto Whitelist feature is highly recommended since this eliminates a high percentage of false positives.
  • In Keyword Whitelist it is recommended to add terms that spammers do not use and terms that relate to the nature of your business, e.g. your product names. Entering too many keywords increases the possibility of emails not getting filtered by GFI MailEssentials and delivered to users’ mailboxes.
  • Whitelisting an internal user defeats the purpose of the Anti-Spoofing filter. See Blocking Spoof Emails.
  • Whitelist affects only Anti-Spam filters and not email security and content filtering 

The next section provides step by step instructions on how to set up and configure the Whitelist criteria:

 

Solution

  1. Navigate to GFI MailEssentials > Anti-Spam > Whitelist

  1. From the Whitelist tab, configure the email addresses and domains to whitelist. Select/Unselect Enable email whitelist to enable/disable whitelist. Perform the following actions:
Action Description
Add a whitelist entry
  1. In Email Address/Domain, provide the email address/domain to whitelist. For example: . *@companysupport.com or. *@*.edu.
  2. In Email Type specify the email header field to match for the emails to be whitelisted.
  3. (Optional) In Description add a description to the entry.
  4. Click Add.

 
Remove whitelist entries
  1. Select one or more whitelist entries from the Whitelist list.
  2. Click Remove.
Search for a whitelist entry
  1. In Search, key in the details of the whitelist entry to search for.
  2. Click Search to display the list of matching terms.
Show Statistics Use the Show Statistics button to view the total number of entries per whitelisted domain.
Import whitelist entries
  1. Specify the full path and filename of the file to use for importing the previously exported data.
  2. Click Import to import entries.
Export whitelist entries

Click Export to export the current list of whitelist entries to an XML file.
  1. Select the Auto Whitelist tab to configure the following options:
Option

Description
Populate Auto Whitelist automatically: If selected, destination email addresses of outbound emails are automatically added to the auto-whitelist.
Enable Email Auto Whitelist

Select this option to enable auto-whitelist. Senders of incoming emails are matched against the auto-whitelist. If the sender is present in the list, the email is forwarded directly to the recipient’s Inbox.
Maximum entries allowed in the Auto Whitelist:

Specify the number of entries allowed in Auto-Whitelist. When the limit specified is exceeded, the oldest and least used entries are automatically replaced by the new entries.

Note: Entering a value larger than the default value of 30,000 can negatively affect the performance of GFI MailEssentials.
  1. From the Keyword Whitelist tab, specify keywords that flag emails as valid emails:
Option Description
Enable email body keyword whitelist

Select this option to check for keywords in the email body which qualify an email as valid.

Add keywords to the Body Keywords list.

You can also import or export lists of keywords from/to an XML file.
Enable email subject keyword whitelist

Select this option to check for keywords in the email subject which qualify an email as valid.

Add keywords to the Subject Keywords list.

You can also import or export lists of keywords from/to an XML file.
Match whole words only (words/phrases in subject/body) When selecting this option, only whole words from the keyword whitelist are matched that qualify an email as valid.
  1. From the IP Whitelist tab, configure:
Option Description
Enable IP Whitelist Select to allow emails received from specific IP addresses to be whitelisted.
Add IP Whitelist entries

1. Specify:

  • Single computer / CIDR: Key in a single IP address or a range of IP addresses using CIDR notation.
  • Group of computers: Specify the Subnet Address and Subnet Mask of the group of IPs to whitelist.

2. (Optional) Add a Description.

3 Click Add.
Remove IP Whitelist entries Select the IPs to remove and click Remove.
  1. Click the Actions tab to enable/disable logging of whitelist occurrences to a file. Provide a path/folder where to store the generated log file. The default location is ...GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\logs\Whitelist.log
  2. Click Apply.
Note: Changes to the whitelist entries take effect immediately you hit the Apply button without having to restart any services.

 

Confirmation

Entries that are successfully added to the Whitelist database will be shown on the configuration tab for each Whitelist module as shown below. Further, a test email to/from the whitelisted email can be sent to verify that it successfully delivered to the intended recipient without being blocked by any anti-spam filter.

Whitelist.PNG

 

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  1. Priyanka Bhotika

  2. Posted
  3. Updated

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