== Whitelisting a user ==

Adding a user to your whitelist gives them a -100 score, which has the effect of always marking their mail as non-spam.

To manually whitelist a particular address, say {{{d.cary@sparkingwire.com}}},
edit your local user prefs file {{{~/.spamassassin/user_prefs}}} (or global {{{/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf}}}):
{{{
# whitelist David Cary:
whitelist_from  d.cary@sparkingwire.com
}}}

Whitelist and blacklist addresses are file-glob-style patterns, so
{{{friend@somewhere.com}}}, {{{*@isp.com}}}, or {{{*.domain.net}}} will all work.
{{{
# whitelist everyone at sparkingwire.com:
whitelist_from  *@sparkingwire.com
}}}

To manually blacklist, use {{{blacklist_from}}} to add an address to your blacklist.

If the sender is at all well known (such as a mailing list), you should use {{{whitelist_from_rcvd}}} instead so that a spammer can't forge their mail to look like it's from the whitelisted address.  More info on {{{whitelist_from}}}, {{{whitelist_from_rcvd}}}, and {{{blacklist_from}}} is on the [[http://www.spamassassin.org/doc/Mail_SpamAssassin_Conf.html|web]] or can be accessed from your local man pages by typing {{{perldoc Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf}}}.

Some good, free web-based tools are available to put a friendly user interface on whitelists (and blacklists) and allow users to edit their own.  See WebUserInterfaces.

== What is AutoWhitelist? ==

Another feature of spamassassin is "auto-whitelist".  But the name is a misnomer.  The AutoWhitelist is designed as an automatic score averaging system, and is just as likely to penalize or blacklist an address as it is to benefit or whitelist it.  If you want to whitelist, you should use the directions above.

== Automatically whitelisting people you've emailed ==

To extract a unique list of e-mail addresses from your 'Sent' folder (in mbox format), you could use something like this:

{{{
#!/bin/sh

SADIR=~/.spamassassin
SENTMAIL=~/mail/Sent

rm -f $SADIR/sent_whitelist
for x in `grep "^To:" $SENTMAIL |
	grep -o "[[:alnum:]\.\+\-\_]*@[[:alnum:]\.\-]*" |
	tr "A-Z" "a-z" |
	sort -u` ;
	
	do echo "whitelist_from $x" >> $SADIR/sent_whitelist
done

cat $SADIR/user_prefs.base $SADIR/sent_whitelist > $SADIR/user_prefs	
}}}

This can be adapted as necessary, and executed as a cron job.  Note, this requires you to store/rename your `user_prefs` file to `user_prefs.base`!  Make sure you do this before running the script or you'll lose your preferences.  Of course if there is some way I'm not aware of to include files from within a `user_prefs` file, please someone make the necessary changes.

''(There is a way: `include filename` - Include configuration lines from "filename".   Relative paths are considered relative to the current configuration file or user preferences file.)

See below.''

== Building an auto-whitelist from LDAP ==

If you run an LDAP-based addressbook, you can use the following simple cron job to build a whitelist nightly:

{{{
# Create a SpamAssassin whitelist
0 * * * *       /usr/pkg/bin/ldapsearch -LLL -b dc=domain,dc=net,dc=au mail | awk '/^mail:/ {print "whitelist_from " $2}' > $HOME/.spamassassin/whitelist_from_ldap.cf
}}}

In your `~/.spamassassin/user_prefs` file, put this in:

{{{
# Whitelist and blacklist addresses are now file-glob-style patterns, so
# "friend@somewhere.com", "*@isp.com", or "*.domain.net" will all work.
# whitelist_from        someone@somewhere.com
whitelist_from  *@blah.com
include whitelist_from_ldap.cf
}}}

=== Contributors ===

 * DavidCary
 * Marcus Dressler
 * Xavier
 * DanKohn
 * GadiCohen
 * JasonLingohr