I use the New Mail filtering rules/applied when the mailbox is opened, but I can't seem to get everything to work correctly. I'm not sure if it's me or the app (or both).

Let's start with the blacklist & whitelist.

If someone could answer the following questions, I would appreciate it.

1. The documentation says that there is a global whitelist which is automatically applied to incoming mail before it is filtered by my rules. I have any email addresses to which I send mail automatically added to this list. However, it seems that in order to actually enforce the list, my mail filtering rules must do it by exiting the filter if the whitelist attribute is set for the incoming mail. Is my understanding correct?

2. There is no "global blacklist". as far as I can tell. But both a whitelist & a blacklist are referenced in the Tools/Spam & Content Control/Content Control/Definitions/Just Blacklist & Whitelist/Exceptions dialog box. These are supposedly PMAIL distribution lists. Are they automatically checked by PMAIL or do they have to be "List Scanned" in my incoming mail filter to be enforced.

Thanks for any help.

Black and white lists are part of Content Control. The Content Control rule set they belong to must be enabled, which then automates list scanning (no mail filter needed). Blacklist hits are sent to the Junk folder. Whitelist hits will be processed through new mail filters so I feel certain that if you didn't want that to happen you would need a whitelist attribute rule to detect then exit from rule processing (I have never done this so I suggest testing it).

Mail filtering occurs in the following order:
POP3 server-side filters
Spamhalter
Content Control
New Mail filters

FWIW, I don't use Content Control. New mail filters and Spamhalter are sufficient for me.

Brian,
Thanks for the reply. You answered a lot of my questions, but I'm still having problems.

I am including some screenshots to clarify the situation. I have some other mail filtering questions, but I will save them for another post.

Here are my questions, so that you can answer them by number.

1. The global whitelist is checked early in the filtering sequence, but it seems that it only sets the attribute for the individual email. See my filtering code, where I check the attribute & exit if it's set. Please verify that this is correct.
2. There is another whitelist referenced in the Content Control Exceptions (see screenshot). This seems to reference a distribution list file which can be specific to the content control definition. Do I need another whitelist attribute rule to check this or use a List Scan in my filter or what?
3. The Blacklist is only referenced in the Content Control Definition. Can it have only exact email addresses (what's between the angle brackets> or does it do a "contains" text match filter? The Help says that if you want to exclude an entire domain, you can put -\MATCH *@domainname.comin the file. What about matching text outside the angle brackets?
4. Does the Blacklist filename (& the whitelist) need a "@" in front of it. Does it need it only when being referenced in a rule?
5. I "List Scan" the blacklist file in my filter (see screenshot), but it seems that may be unnecessary if it's already done by the content control.

Sorry to be such a pain. PMAIL seems to be able to do almost anything (even tie your shoelaces!) if you can figure out how to tell it to do it.

Thanks again.

What you have 'should' work but if have never tried it. I propose this test to see if it is working: Change rule action from "Always exit" to change color then see if the color gets changed when a message from a whitelisted source arrives. If it doesn't, check the message properties to see the "Is Whitelisted" property is ticked. If neither, then the problem would appear to be in the whitelist itself.

This is the only whitelist that I know of. What is the other one you see?

Where did you see the reference to "-\Match"? I don't see it in the manual or the Content Control help content. Best I can tell from the documentation, only email addresses or domains using the asterisk wildcard are acceptable. Perhaps another forum member knows more about this.

Correct. Also, think about this. If the Content Control blacklist moves a message to Junk then it will never be processed through the new mail filter.

Concerning this screenshot...

...the \MATCH can be ignored without a proper ending. Usually, a "*" following the partial address will do. As an example, the first one should be:

\MATCH *@vrnewhampshire.com*

Thanks to both Brian & Euler for responding.

For Brian -

Your suggestion of changing the color of the message to trace its processing during filtering is a good one. I tried that and the global whitelist attribute does work correctly. I had been using the playing of sounds, but that doesn't seem to work reliably.

I am now also using changing the color of the message for other filtering flags - such as junk & blacklisted mail. Very useful.

The blacklist I reference in my Content Control definition doesn't seem to work, but that may be because I have no content processing rules file defined. I'm trying to use just the Blacklist & Whitelist. List Scanning that Blacklist file in my new mail filter does work. When I edit the Whitelist file using the Content Control editor, there is nothing in the file, yet the Global Whitelist has hundreds of entries. I can't explain that, except that maybe the 2 Whitelists are separate.

You can find a description of the \MATCH command in the Help under "Filtering Rules, list membership matching".

So things are working fairly well. I still have a few filtering anomalies, but I'll save them for help later and just proceed with what I have for now.

BTW, I do have a somewhat detailed filter which runs when the New Mailbox is closed. It catches my bills & puts them in a special folder. It works really well & helps make sure I don't miss any bills, since I get most of them by email.

Thanks again.

Yup. Content Control is off unless a rule filter is enabled.

They are indeed different. I don't know what file contains the Global Whitelist and don't have time to dig into that at the moment, but I intend to when I can, unless someone enlightens me sooner.

It is WHITE.PM. The file does not exist until the first entry is added to the Global Whitelist. It is not a .PML file so can not be used as a listscan list like the white and black lists of content control, or any other distribution list. A whitelisted message is not process by Content Control or Spamhalter but doing anything beyond that requires checking for the whitelisted attribute with a filter and then acting as you want.

Note clear on this? Checked my mail directory and find these files.
$ ls -lrt WHITE BLACK | cut -b34-80
2014 Dec 8 2020 WHITE.PML
106 Nov 12 2024 BLACK.PML
13387 Jul 17 17:54 WHITE-M.PM

WHITE.PML and BLACK.PML are the default lists used by Content Content control.
WHITE.PM is the Global whitelist.
WHITE-M.PM, IIRC, is the Global whitelist when the "Make this whitelist visible for Mercury/32 to use" option is enabled.

Don't have WHITE.PM on my system just the WHITE-M.PM?
Long time ago had my Pegasus running with Mercury on Novell 4.x server, but that was like 25 years ago?

You wouldn't have both. An explanation could be that your Global whitelist was first created to be visible to Mercury and still survives today. Seems improbable, but possible??? The "-M" is harmless. Mercury won't use a WHITE.PM but will use a WHITE-M.PM whereas Pegasus will use whichever one exists. That's how I remember it working anyway. I've been retired and away from Mercury for 4.5 yrs and have forgotten more than I remember about Mercury.