Welcomelists and Blocklists are both used to customize what emails are able to make it to your inbox. Welcomelisting is a useful tool in making sure that e-mails that are important to you are making it to your inbox and not being marked as spam. Blocklisting does the opposite and is a useful tool in lowering the amounts of spam you are getting to your inbox. You can get to these by logging in to your Sonic mailbox at https://members.sonic.net. Navigate to E-mail > Spam filtering > Welcomelists/Blocklists. All of the settings shown below will be behind that Welcomelists/Blocklists sub menu. 

A detailed description of how our spam filtering works and how Welcomelisting and Blocklisting plays their part can be found in our SpamAssassin article.

Welcomelists

Welcomelist Address

The first option for Welcomelisting is going to be Welcomelisting specific e-mail addresses. Enter the e-mail address you would like to Welcomelist and click the button to add the entry. Going forward, whenever an e-mail from the specified e-mail hits our spam filter, it will be given special treatment to help it reach your inbox. You can also use the * symbol to signify a wild card. For example:

• jane@example.com | This will Welcomelist all e-mails coming in from jane@example.com.
• *@example.com | This will Welcomelist all e-mails from the example.com domain.
• Welcomelist address *@sonic.*
  • This allows the subdomain of sonic., regardless of what the top-level domain is for that email address. This will allow an address with *@sonic.net, *@sonic.com, etc
• Welcomelist address sonic
  • This is ineffective.
• Welcomelist address *sonic*
  • This welcomes any email address that has "sonic" in it, either before or after the @, even if it is part of a subdomain. This will block sonic@gmail.com, joe@sonic.net, support@sonic.phish.ru, and so on.

You can edit or delete Welcomelist additions manually. Scrolling down to the bottom of the page will give options to delete all entries or to share settings with all mailboxes on the account (the latter will only show up if logged into the primary Sonic account).

More Options

The top drop down offers three additional options to Welcomelisting. The first, UnWelcomelist From, is an easy way to remove specific addresses from a wildcard. For example:

• Welcomelist From *@example.com | All e-mails with the domain example.com will be Welcomelisted.
• UnWelcomelist From joe@example.com | joe@example.com will be an exception to the 1st rule.
• UnWelcomelist From jane@example.com | jane@example.com will also be an exception to the 1st rule.

The above example shows an easy way to Welcomelist all e-mails from example.com, except for that of joe@example.com and jane@example.com. The next two options, Welcomelist From Received and UnWelcomelist From Received work the same as Welcomelist From and UnWelcomelist From. The difference is that both allow the additional checking of the message headers. The entered string is matched against the reverse DNS lookup used during the handover from the untrusted Internet to your trusted network's mail exchangers. The format that these entries should be entered are as follows:

• Welcomelist From Received *@example.com mailserver.example.com
• UnWelcomelist From Received joe@example.com
• UnWelcomelist From Received jane@example.com

Welcomelist Subject

Welcomelist Subject allows you to Welcomelist any e-mails that come in with keywords in the subject line. Note that the more specific, the better. For example, if you Welcomelist the subject e, any e-mail that has the letter e anywhere in the subject line will be Welcomelisted.

• When adding a subject to the welcomelist, capitals do not matter, but the words must be in order.
• Example e-mail subject: Your Purchase Receipt.
• Don't: Welcomelist Subject you | Since you is in the subject, the Welcomelisting would work. However, every other e-mail that has you in the subject will also be Welcomelisted.
• Do: Welcomelist Subject receipt | This will not only Welcomelist this e-mail, but will make sure that only e-mails of a similar intent are Welcomelisted.

More Lists

In the More Lists section, you have the option of adding To-Welcomelisting. This will check the To: field in an e-mail. This is useful when you have one or more e-mails forwarding to your Sonic mailbox. There are three levels of To-Welcomelisting: welcomelist To, More Spam To and All Spam To. Addresses in the first level may occasionally have some spammish mails blocked, but addresses in All Spam To should never get mail blocked.

• Welcomelist To address@example.com | This will Welcomelist e-mails forwarded from address@example.com to your Sonic mailbox. High SpamAssassin score e-mails will still be blocked.
• All Spam To address@example.com | This will Welcomelist e-mails forwarded from address@example.com to your Sonic mailbox. This will override high SpamAssassin scores and always make it to your inbox.

At the bottom of this page, there is also a section to allow e-mails via Trusted Networks. You can specify specific IP addresses or ranges. For example, the following example to trust anything that comes from Sonic.net's mail servers.

Trusted Networks 64.142.100.0/25
Trusted Networks 208.201.249.228/30
Trusted Networks 209.204.159.4

Blocklists

 Blocklist Address

Blocklisting an e-mail address will help ensure that it doesn't reach your inbox. You can enter a full e-mail address or use the * symbol to represent a wildcard.

• Blocklist From spammer@example.com | This will only block e-mails from spammer@example.com.
• Blocklist From *@spamdomain.com | This Blocklist will block from all e-mail addresses at spamdomain.com.
• Blocklist address *@sonic.*
  • This blocks the subdomain of sonic., regardless of what the top-level domain is for that email address. This will block *@sonic.net, *@sonic.com, etc
• Blocklist address sonic
  • This is ineffective.
• Blocklist address *sonic*
  • This blocks any email address that has "sonic" in it, either before or after the @, even if it is part of a subdomain. This will block sonic@gmail.com, joe@sonic.net, support@sonic.phish.ru, and so on.

By using the drop down at the top of the page and selecting Unblocklist From, you can make exceptions to wildcards. For example, if you get a lot of spam from example.com, but want to make sure that mail from friend@example.com doesn't get tagged as spam:

• Blocklist From *@example.com | Setting the rule to Blocklist everything from example.com.
• Blocklist From friend@example.com | Adding the exception for friend@example.com.

If you Blocklist an address and e-mails continue to show up from the sender, double check spelling and make sure there isn't a contradicting Welcomelist entry. Conflicting entries will cancel each other out and process e-mail as if there were no entries.

Blocklist Subject

Blocklist Subject works very similar to blocklist Address, except it focuses on the subject line of the e-mail instead of the sender's address. The drop down will have the option to Unblocklist Subject.

• When adding a subject to the blocklist, capitals do not matter, but the words must be in order.
• Blocklist Subject 'spam' 
  •  This will block every e-mail with spam in the subject line.
• Unblocklist Subject spamfriend | This will make an exception to the above rule if spamfriend is found in the subject.

It is important to note that the more specific the blocklist entry, the less likely you are to Blocklist legitimate e-mails.

• Example e-mail subject: Free Lasik Surgery
• Don't Blocklist Subject free | While this will Blocklist the above subject, it will also Blocklist any e-mail that has free anywhere in the subject line.
• Do Blocklist Subject lasik | This Blocklist entry is more specific and will catch a more refined group of e-mails.

More Lists

Blocklist To checks the To: field in the e-mail. This is useful if you have multiple e-mail addresses pointing to one e-mail box.