Safelists...
 

I hope this is the right place to post this.

I understand I can use my 'enhanced' account to set up an email address for use as a safelist - save me paying for such an service elsewhere.

What is the best way to do that?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks and have a great day,
Bob

Hi bme,

Do you mean you want to set up your FM account so that it will only accept emails from a safe list of your friends? If so you can do this by turning on the 'White List' feature.

Before doing this though, you do need to make sure everyone you want to receive emails from is in your address book.

Click on...
'Options'
'Spam/Virus Protection'
& then selecting the
'White List Only (use with caution)' button.


It does say 'use with caution' for good reason. It has the potential to discard a lot of emails. From reading other posts on this forum, many people don't seem to consider it the answer to spam protection.

Richard

you can also whitelist a whole domain by adding say,
*@example.com
to your address book

Please note that the normal use of the word 'safelist' is a form of opt-in 'spam' (ok, it's not really spam as you opted in for it, but the type of mail is the same) mail list. In exchange for signing up for this, you are allowed to sent commercial messages to all others on the list.

This is a practice generally frowned upon, as none of the subscribers to safe-lists actually bother to read the garbage shoveled into their mailboxes every day.

I don't know what FM's position is on this, but I can imagine they wouldn't be too happy about it.

If you meant whitelist instead of safelist, then FM is the place for you. You can set up a whitelist system using the filters, allowing only mails from designated senders in.

--K

kander: Safelists are guaranteed to be not spam (unlike many none opt in marketing campaigns)

If a person is paying Fastmail to send and receive messages, they are entitled to use their account for whatever they choose (assuming legality and adherence to the TOS of course)

Regardless of if they read these messages, consider that they are paying good money for the bandwidth - same as everyone else.

David,

About the spam-or-ham point you raised - as mentioned in my previous post, I realize that it's technically not spam because of the opt-in nature of a safelist. Would using the word 'Mass Commercial Mail' instead of the word spam express it better?

Anyway, it is still my opinion that (despite the opt-in), safelists are still something that generates large amounts of traffic for the servers with relatively low returns on investment.

You're right about FM's position on SafeLists... http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts...SignupSafelist

However, many safelists (at least the first page or so of them I found on a google search) have put Fastmail on their 'Do not sign up with addresses from these providers'-list...

--K
--K

I think we all missed the point kander. Reading the original question (again) it seems that Bob might be wanting to set up a safelist at Fastmail (not just receive and send mail to a safelist)

Bob: If this is what you are asking, the answer to your question is no - you will need to use a Listserver in order to gain that capability.

Only one word comes to mind now:

Doh.

--K

Thank you all...
 

You have given me the information I needed and will not be using my FM account for setting up a safelist.

Thanks again and have a good day,
Bob

Man it's getting wet here in the Bay Area.