Emails lost due to greylisting

Dean Williams

Registered
Aug 23, 2017
1
0
1
Cannock, UK
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
I read another thread during my quest to get an email out of grey listing: Disabling Greylisting BUT still deliver the messages stuck

Appears I cannot comment further on this thread so started a new one.

The interesting point made on this thread is a proper legitimate email host will always try and resend so anything super important will not be lost, well this is not always the case...

this is EXACTLY the issue I have RIGHT NOW, and the email in question is from a legitimate source, in fact its from an SSL provider GEOTRUST.COM.

their email has got stuck in grey listing, I have white listed them for future but there is no way to retrieve emails from grey listing. They HAVE NOT attempted to send the email again.

So here is an example of a very legitimate email that is lost due to the system not storing messages, which I think is insane considering... They should be kept even if its only for the first 24 hours or something.

I love the greylisting system, never had a problem until now... and to lose an email "just because" is an insane feature, emails do not even take up that much space or resources, if the argument is that the server will be storing many junk mails then why does the server store SPAM messages instead of following the same method of "lost and forgotten until reminded" - emails should never be completely lost unless they are outright rejected or blocked.

Correct me if I am wrong but greylisting is sort of an in between legitimate and spammy, where the server is supposedly waiting for the host to resend to confirm that the mailserver is indeed sending legitimate mail and not a spam one time message, so surely they should be stored somewhere to be confirmed manually and delivered manually if required.
 

cPanelMichael

Administrator
Staff member
Apr 11, 2011
47,880
2,261
463
Hello Dean,

Greylisting is designed to defer emails until the message is resent from the sending server. Accepting the message and queuing it for a set time before delivery (or leaving it in a queue in-case the sender doesn't resend) would be a major change to how this feature works. I recommend opening a feature request for this change if it's something you'd like to see added to the product.

Submit A Feature Request

In the meantime, one other potential option to consider is the "Bypass Greylisting for Hosts with Valid SPF Records" option under "Configuration Settings" in "WHM >> Greylisting". This would allow your server to automatically accepts email from hosts with a valid SPF record.

Thank you.