Whitelisting

A quick guide to whitelisting email addresses and domains.

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What Is Whitelisting?

Whitelisting an email address is telling your email provider that an email address is good and that you want to receive emails from it. Whitelisting a domain is much the same apart from the fact it is more comprehensive. Whitelisting example.com would allow emails from anyone at example.com, for instance barry@example.com and sue@example.com.

Whitelisting emails or domains not only allows blocked emails to be received but also stops them from potentially being blocked in the future.

How To Whitelist

There are hundreds of different email service providers and servers in the world and each will have a different method for how to add and remove from the whitelist. Here are a few examples covering some of the most popular email providers:

GMail

1. Add the address to your contacts

Add the email address that is sending you mail to your GMail contacts. Google will usually deliver email from addresses that are in your contacts.

2. Mark messages as not spam

If GMail has marked emails you wish to whitelist as spam, tell GMail the emails are not spam.

  1. On the left hand side click Spam
  2. In the search bar search for the email address or domain you with to whitelist.
  3. Select all the emails shown using the checkboxes to the left of the sender.
  4. In the top bar click Not spam

3. Create a filter for the address

Create a filter to tell Google to whitelist email

  1. At the top right click Settings.
  2. Click Filters and blocked addressesCreate a new filter
  3. Enter the domain or email address you want to whitelist in the From field.
  4. In the bottom left click Create filter with this search.
  5. Click the checkbox marked Never send it to Spam
  6. Click Create filter
Outlook Live / Hotmail / MSN

1. Add the address to your contacts

Add the email address that is sending you mail to your Outlook contacts. Outlook will usually deliver email from addresses that are in your contacts.

2. Add the address to your safe senders

  1. In the top bar click Options
  2. On the left hand side select MailJunk EmailSafe Senders
  3. Enter the domain or email address you want to whitelist and click
  4. Click Save to save changes.
Yahoo! Mail

1. Add the address to your contacts

Add the email address that is sending you mail to your Yahoo contacts. Yahoo will usually deliver email from addresses that are in your contacts.

2. Mark messages as not spam

If Yahoo has marked emails you wish to whitelist as spam, tell Yahoo the emails are not spam.

  1. On the left hand side click Spam
  2. In the search bar search for the email address or domain you wish to whitelist.
  3. Select all the emails shown using the checkboxes to the left of the sender.
  4. In the top bar click Not spam

3. Create a filter for the address

Create a filter to tell Yahoo to whitelist email

  1. At the top right click Settings
  2. On the left hand side click Filters and then Add
  3. Give the filter a name and enter the domain or email address you want to whitelist in the From field.
  4. Select Inbox from the dropdown list at the bottom
  5. Click Save and then Save again

And here are some more technical instructions for some of the most popular email filters and administrative tools. Note that most of these contain links to the official documentation for each tool:

Mimecast

1. Permitting a blocked sender (v7.x)

  1. Click Blocked in the left hand pane of the Mimecast control panel.
  2. Click Permit to the right of the required address or domain.

2. Adding a permitted sender (v7.x)

  1. Click Permitted in the left hand pane.
  2. Click Add Permitted to display the Permitted senders and domains dialog.
  3. Type the address or domain and click Add.
  4. Repeat the previous step for other senders or domains.
  5. Click Permit to finalise your changes.

For full details and instructions for older versions of Mimecast, please view the article here.

Barracuda

1. Whitelist quarantined senders

  1. Barracuda should send you a summary each day listing quarantined items. Open the most recent Barracuda email message
  2. Locate the email from an address that you do not want quarantined in the future. Click Whitelist which is in green print to the right of the email title. This will open your list.
  3. Click the checkbox to the left of the email that you would like to whitelist.
  4. At the top of the page, click Whitelist

2. Whitelist senders and domains

  1. Click Block/Accept in the Barracuda web UI
  2. Click Sender Domain Block/Accept, Enter the domain name to whitelist (and an optional comment) and click Add OR
  3. Click Email Sender Block/Accept, enter the email address of an individual sender that you want to whitelist (and an optional comment) and click Add
Google G Suite

1. Whitelist addresses by IP

  1. Sign in to the Google Admin console
  2. From the dashboard, go to AppsG SuiteGmailAdvanced Settings
  3. In the Organizations section, highlight your domain
  4. In the Email Whitelist section, enter the IP addresses of your contact's domain host. If you would like to add more than one IP address, enter an IP range in CIDR notation or separate each IP address with a comma.
  5. Click Save changes

For full details, please view the article here.

Microsoft Office 365 Exchange

There are a number of options for Exchange 365. For full details please view the article here

Cisco WebEx

1. Whitelist domains

  1. To enter domain information, select Configuration
  2. Click System SettingsDomain(s)
  3. In the Domain Whitelist box, enter the names of trusted domains
  4. Click Save to finalise your settings

A Final Note

Since there are so many email services there is a chance that your service is not covered here. However, the process will is likely to be very similar to the above. In any case it is worth reading the documentation for your product and carefully going through the instructions to whitelist the domain/email address that you want to receive emails from.