This article is intended to warn you of the dangers of whitelisting or blacklisting your domain name or your mailbox using the SpamAssassin white and black listing functionality.

If you whitelist your domain name or mailbox as a sender, it will increase the number of spam messages reaching your mailbox. The spammers use the so-called "header spoofing" technique that allows them to use any e-mail address as From and Return-Path, whether or not they have access to the mail server for that domain. This is a flaw of the global SMTP protocol.

If you whitelist your domain name or mailbox as a recipient, it will stop the SpamAssassin and header filters spam protection. All messages sent to the mailbox will bypass the SpamAssassin and the header filters.

If you blacklist your domain name or mailbox as a sender, it will prevent you from sending messages from your domain or mailbox to yourself.

If you blacklist your domain name or mailbox as a recipient, it will stop the delivery of all email messages to the domain or the mailbox.