Whitelist Management
Contents
Whitelist Management
Spam 'n Virus Blast It! (SVBI!) eliminates almost all viruses. It's divided into two sections...
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E-mail Account Management, where you create and manage your individual email accounts (which are the only accounts that may receive email)
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Whitelist Management, where you manage who's allowed to send you email.
For email to reach you, it must be sent to an existing email account and it must be from an address that's on your whitelist.
The ultimate goal is to receive only wanted email. With SVBI!, only legitimate contacts know one or more of your email accounts and have their email addresses on your whitelist, so their mail is allowed through.
SVBI! eliminates spammers. And it also eliminates nuisance email from non-serious visitors to your site, replaced by serious prospects who complete contact forms instead.
The result?
Near 100% elimination of spam and viruses, and near-zero "false positives."
False-positives will be reduced to a very small number of low-potential, unknown contacts (e.g., a visitor who will not take the time to complete a contact form but prefers to guess at a non-published email address, and even then will not reply to the Challenge-Response system in place).
Use this section of SVBI! to manage your whitelist.
A whitelist is a list of email addresses that are "allowed" to email you. One way or another, you know that these addresses belong to real human beings, either people you know or those people who have manually indicated an interest in your business.
That means the senders using those addresses have permission to contact you at your email accounts.
SVBI! handles much of your whitelist management automatically (as described below), just like your email account management.
You start your whitelist by populating it with all the email addresses of friends, colleagues, relatives, business associates... all the addresses that you want to "let in."
It's easy. "Start big!" Click on the Add to Whitelist button. But, just before you do that...
Export your entire Address Book in your client-side email software (e.g., Outlook, Apple Mail). It's the fastest and easiest way to start your whitelist. Then use the Add to Whitelist button to import it into SVBI!...
Instant Whitelist!
You can do the same with any other database of contacts, suppliers, prospects, customers, etc.
You do not need to add SiteSell domain names to your whitelist. We would not be able to send you your "Welcome" email unless those domain names were a built-in part of every SBI! whitelist.
In addition to the "mass-import," you can also add addresses through the form in the Add to Whitelist section. Use this to add the "one-ofs" that you likely don't have in your Address Book, but from whom you do receive mail. For example...
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newsletter addresses
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mailing/discussion lists
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companies you purchase from
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other individuals who were not included in the above process.
In both cases, follow the online help for Adding To Your Whitelist.
Important Note
Spammers sometimes forge the "from" address to be the same as the "to" address in an effort to "trick the mail into your Inbox." Therefore, we do not automatically whitelist email to yourself from your own SBI! domain name. We suggest you leave it like this. However...
Some people have special reasons to CC themselves. If that's your case, create a special email account just for this (one that a spammer would not guess at). Add that address to your whitelist.
Want to remove an email from your whitelist? Click the Remove from Whitelist button and follow the online help for Removing From Your Whitelist.
SVBI! Automatically Builds and Maintains the Whitelist
SVBI! automatically adds to/updates your whitelist in many ways (and you can manually fine-tune it, too). And here's an important point...
A few important points about turning off whitelist filtering...
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Email account management remains the same -- all email sent to any address at your domain name that's not an existing email account is always refused.
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The option to redirect email to an outside address is severely curtailed.
Here's how SVBI! keeps your whitelist up-to-date...
1) Address Book
SVBI! automatically adds all addresses in your Webmail Address Book to your whitelist.
2) Outbound Email
Let's say that you send an email to someone (in the "Create Message" section of Webmail). SVBI! automatically addsd the email address of that person, if it's not already on the whitelist.
3) Opt-in Newsletter
SVBI! adds the addresses of all subscribers to your opt-in newsletter to your whitelist. The address is only added after that person confirms the opt-in (whether s/he subscribes via the newsletter form on the site or if you add the address via the MailOut Manager).
4) Form Build It!
SVBI! automatically adds the email addresses of all visitors who have submitted their email addresses through a form built with Form Build It!.
Since they've indicated an interest in your business, and took the time to enter the Captcha challenge word, they can mail you (as long as they know one of your email accounts).
There's another (less common but important) way that Form Build It! can add addresses to your whitelist.
Those special addresses come from the Send To and/or CC addresses in Notification emails. Here's how it works...
When you create a Notification email, you can send it to a "primary" Send to address and up to two CC addresses. You'll likely send these to one or more outside email addresses (i.e., not your own SBI! domain name).
If so, SVBI! adds each such address to your whitelist. This permits the recipient of the Notification email to reply to you.
5) Content 2.0
Any visitor to your site who contributes to one of your C2 invitations and asks to be notified of certain events has his/her email address whitelisted.
6) Sender Whitelisted
This method allows any human being (i.e., non-spambot) to manually add his/her address to your whitelist. To do so, they proceed to the following URL...
https://whitelist.sitesell.com
If you click on the above link, you'll see that they must enter...
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their email address (which they want to add to your whitelist)
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your specific email account (proves they know one of your email accounts)
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a graphic-challenge (which requires human action).
Successful completion of this challenge allows humans who know one of your email accounts to whitelist. Successful completion automatically whitelists and that person can now email you from his or her specific whitelisted email address.
How do people find out about this "special back door?"
Either you tell them about it, or SVBI! does...
Anyone who's not on your whitelist will receive a refusal reply message from SVBI!. Basically, our mail server tells the sender's mail server that we don't know this person.
We include instructions, in that bounce-back message, for that user to go to the above URL (whitelist.sitesell.com) in order to whitelist with you.
Once at whitelist.sitesell.com, they enter their email address and also your email address that they're trying to reach.
The page reassures them that it's a one-time-only event. A graphic-challenge ensures that no automated process can circumvent its intent.
The message is short and polite, and explains the spam issue and that they only ever have to whitelist once. After that, the person's address is on your whitelist.
This is a foolproof way of ensuring the only emails you receive are sent by a real human. And there's a special bonus here for you...
After someone uses the form at whitelist.sitesell.com to get onto your whitelist, they see a page that confirms their addition to your whitelist. This page also displays an in-context, promotional message about Solo Build It!. If that person clicks on the link to SiteSell...
We write your affiliate cookie to that visitor. If s/he later buys SBI!, you earn a commission if you're a SiteSell Affiliate Program affiliate. If you aren't, you can join at...
https://affiliates.sitesell.com
You have nothing to lose, and a commission to gain! (You can turn this promo off -- click here for more information.)
7) Wormhole
A wormhole is a special address. It solves the problem of how to deal with a party that will send you automated replies that you want.
Click here for detailed information about how to create and manage wormholes.
For example, you buy something at Amazon or you subscribe to an newsletter. They're going to send you an automated reply, confirmation, request for you to confirm opt-in, etc.
But you don't know what address(es) they'll send post-order emails from, so there's no way for you to whitelist (unless you whitelist the whole domain name, which opens you up to spam forgeries).
A wormhole drills through this mess.
Create a Wormhole E-mail Account. Enter that wormhole address when you subscribe or buy.
For a certain number of days (set by you), SVBI! automatically whitelists the "From" email address of all email sent to the wormhole account. After that, the wormhole closes and it behaves like a "regular" email account...
That means that any mail (from non-whitelisted addresses) to an ex-wormhole address will be refused (with the usual whitelist.sitesell.com graphic-challenge message included in the refusal).
You may delete an ex-wormhole account -- it's best, though, to leave it open as a regular email account, since those who whitelisted through this address may not know any other address for you. However...
If you manage a wormhole address badly, you may have no choice but to close it down. (More on the nuts and bolts of how to create wormhole addresses, along with strategies for best results, in Create New Accounts.)
Tip
Most mailing/discussion lists work by sending a message from a certain address, for example, [email protected]. Add that address to your whitelist and subscribe to the "digest" version of the list... unless you want to receive the messages one-by-one, which requires that every individual on the list be whitelisted!
Important Note
Regardless of how an email address makes it onto your whitelist, that address is "good to go" at all email accounts created by you. In other words, an address that's whitelisted on [email protected] will also be whitelisted for [email protected].