ESET Glossary – Table of Contents

Whitelist

Generally, a whitelist is a list of items or persons who are accepted or granted permission. The email whitelist (allowed addresses) defines a list of contacts from whom the user wishes to receive messages. Such whitelists are based on keywords searched for in email addresses, domain names, or IP addresses.

If a whitelist works in “exclusivity mode“, then messages from any other address, domain, or IP address will not be received. If a whitelist is not exclusive, such messages will not be deleted, but filtered in another way.

A whitelist is based on the opposite principle to that of a blacklist. Whitelists are relatively easy to maintain, more so than blacklists. We recommend that you use both the Whitelist and Blacklist to filter spam more effectively.