Email from external domain blocked even though it's white listed

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#1

I have a client who cannot receive mail from a specific domain with who they do business. The incoming domain received a notice that they are classified as spam, and I explained to my client that the problem lies with the sender domain, however, as I have done in the past, I whitelisted their domain in spamassasin setup in my control panel. In the past this has worked but this time it seems that, even whitelisted, the mail doesn’t come through. The question is two-fold: 1) Is adding an entry into the spamassasin setup tab for “*.domaiin.com” the right way to whitelist a domain or mail account? and 2) Is there anything I can do for the blocked domain? Thank you.

#2

This may help to understand how the whitelist functions: https://spamassassin.apache.org/full/3.2.x/doc/Mail_SpamAssassin_Conf.html#whitelist_and_blacklist_options

Examples:
joe@example.com
*@example.com

#7

It doesn’t seem to be listed in RBL, but their score is 231, from a report I was sent:

Diagnostic-Code: xx@xx.gr, ERROR_CODE :550, ERROR_CODE :Your message to xx@xx.gr was classified as SPAM. Please add more
content, cut down on HTML links, use fewer naughty words etc. Also, ask
your IT dept to make sure your mailserver has REVERSEDNS, SPF, DKIM, and is
not on any black lists. Your score: 231

I don’t think throtling the scores would do anything…

#8

Reversion to SpamAssassin complete, should function more as intended now. Sorry about that. Thanks for helping me catch it. I didn’t have London on my to-do list for that process, as it was still on my cPanel list.

#9

So the config file will now be parsed? I will test and get back to you. Thank you for the quick help, surprised I was the first to hit the water, but c’est la vie…

#11

Thank you Jarland, I just got notice that it worked. The mail got delivered to inbox. I checked the received itan and they are using zohomail, I see that they have had issues in the past… Anyway, thanks again, we can mark this as solved.

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#3

Thank you, I read the file and checked the manual configuration, I have both *@domain.com and the specific addresses (user@domain.com) as “whitelist_from” in the config. The settings have been saved, but they still cannot get through… Another step would be to “whitelist_to” my clients domain, but that would leave them without spam checking, right?

#6

Actually, apologies. Some of my answer was wrong. I didn’t revert London from rspamd to SpamAssassin as I intended. I’ll do that real quick.

#10

Just to be safe, maybe add something to the whitelist and hit Save again

#5

You could try increasing the scores and the actions taken by the scores. By default on the DA servers all email that doesn’t get hit by an RBL (that error should be clear if the case, when they get the message back) goes to the inbox, and you can set what happens to it on the top section of the Spamassassin Setup page.

If it’s being rejected due to RBL, your whitelist won’t override it.