By Stephanie Santoro

Whitelisting. It sounds like something regular Joes behind a desk don’t need to worry about–a drab and boring IT department thing. I know I’ve dismissed it in the past as “not that serious” and have often ignored email requests to whitelist advertisers. I’ve especially blown past whitelisting requests that are snuck into incessant marketing emails from product pushers I don’t care anything about.

We should be thankful that internet security is getting smarter at anticipating real threats and viruses. But occasionally, things we want to see are blocked and the annoying things are allowed in. A lot of the labor of monitoring and anticipating suspicious activity in our inboxes is unseen and done for us proactively by programmers, IT departments at our jobs, etc. But we can help too.

Not only should we not ignore requests for feedback or survey participation, we should be way more proactive about whitelisting requests. It benefits our online communities, user groups, and business networks. It helps legitimate, trustworthy service providers tailor genuine and desirable experiences for us. It helps your banks, professional development resources, and other places you do business with get through with important news and updates.

To whitelist sources you don’t want to risk losing communication with, use the Sending Configuration of the trustworthy service provider, and simply hand it over to your IT department. For example, IPI’s is in the grid below. And you should whitelist us. Even if you’re getting emails regularly now, you never know when the internet and email is or has been too smart to recognize us as trustworthy on its own:

SENDING CONFIGURATION

Assigned IPI address:	209.18.70.131 209.18.70.132
Prepend domain:	http://send.parking.org
Return path:	bounce@send.parking.org

Be sure to ask IT to confirm once complete. Help your inbox be smarter and notify your IT experts of the trustworthy and valuable sources you want to continue hearing from. You could be missing out on so much already. Once this server whitelisting step is taken, ask about other quick steps you can perform from your own Outlook, or other email client, to ensure deliverability. Your satisfaction and connectivity depend on it.

For further assistance whitelisting IPI, email privacy@parking.org any time.

Stephanie Santoro is IPI’s project manager.