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Proofpoint, Inc.

Setting Up Sender Lists

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Situation

You want to know how to allow or block emails from specific email addresses, domains, or IPs.
Solution The Sender Lists page is where users and admins can input email addresses, domains, or IPs to allow  or block messages based upon the specific item.


Accessing Sender Lists

There are 3 locations for Sender Lists:

Proofpoint Essentials Partners Support Access

Partners that manage customers can access their customer Sender lists as an admin. You will have to navigate to the specific customer themselves, and the Sender Lists are found in the same places.

Account-Level Sender lists

A company can access their Sender Lists which affect all users in the company under: Security Settings > Email > Sender Lists.

User-Level Sender Lists

  1. As an admin, navigate to the Users. 
  2. Identify the specific user and edit the user. 
  3. Navigate to the Sender Lists tab for the user.

As an end-user: Once you log into your account, select the Allow/Block Sender Lists.

Group-Level Sender Lists

Only an admin can access the Group sender lists.

Similar to a User: 

  1. Navigate to the Groups tab. 
  2. Identify the specific group, then edit the group.
  3. Navigate to the Sender Lists tab for the specific group.

Editing the lists

The Sender Lists page presents two sections labeled as:

  • Blocked Sender List - will quarantine the message.
  • Safe Sender List - will let the message through as Filtered: Allow.

To understand Block and Safe list order of processing, please see Mail Flow Scanning & Filters Order of Processing. 

Processing Order

  • A filter will override a sender list entry
  • Users supersede groups, which supersedes the organization.
  • Items within each list have an order of processing as well. 
  1. Enter items into the list:
    • Domains (e.g. *@gmail.com)
    • Individual addresses (e.g. name@domain.com)
    • IP addresses (in full, or with wild-cards, or in CIDR notation: see below for examples) in the appropriate box, using a line break, comma, or semi-colon to separate multiple entries.
  2. Click Save.

Managing your sender lists

 

To manage your sender lists, click on your name in the top right hand side of the user interface and choose Sender lists or, on the Settings tab, click Sender Lists.

The Sender Lists page presents two boxes: one for entering address, domains or IP addresses to be blocked, one for adding addresses or domains to be considered safe.

  1. Enter individual addresses, domains or IP addresses in the appropriate box, using a line break, comma or semi-colon to separate multiple entries. Use the syntax *@domain (e.g. *@gmail.com).
  2. Click Save.
Type of Entry Example
Email Address
Domain
IP Address
  • 10.20.0.4
  • 10.20.*.4
  • 10.*.*.*
  • *.20.*.16
  • 10.0.62.0/24

You cannot use a wildcard and a number within the same octet. For example, 10.2*.0.4 is not valid.

You cannot use a wildcard and a CIDR in the same entry. For example, 10.20.*.4/24 is not valid.
 

IP notations

Examples of acceptable IP address syntax include:

How to use CIDR notation to add IP's to lists in Proofpoint. 

Default sender lists for new customers can be defined in a template. 

Troubleshooting

Issue

When adding a large CIDR range an error is generated. The changes made to the Safe Sender List contained an invalid email address, domain, IP or CIDR.

Solution

Sender lists can only accept CIDR range notation of /24. Anything larger will need to be broken down in the /24 range. There is no limit to the number of /24 you can add