Whitelist

A whitelist is a list or register of entities that are being provided a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. Entities on the list will be accepted, approved and/or recognized. Whitelisting is the reverse of blacklisting, the practice of identifying entities that are denied, unrecognised, or ostracised.

Email whitelists

Spam filters that come with email clients have both whitelists and blacklists of senders and keywords to look for in emails. If a spam filter keeps a whitelist, mail from the listed email addresses, domains, and/or IP address will always be allowed.

Some internet service providers have whitelists that they use to filter email to be delivered to their customers.

If a whitelist is exclusive, only email from entities on the whitelist will get through. If it is not exclusive, it prevents email from being deleted or sent to the junk mail folder by the spam filter. Usually, only end-users would set a spam filter to delete all emails from sources not on the whitelist, not internet service providers or email services.