#Settings Allow Sender and Block Sender Email/Domain functions can cause confusion

[runboxdave]

The recently added functions for Allow Sender, Block Sender Email and Block Sender Domain can cause confusion because they don't indicate that this is a list based feature.

We know the Allow Sender button is adding to the Allow List and the Block Sender/Domain is adding those details to the Blocked Senders list. However, the customer doesn't necessarily know that these two lists exist independently of each other and actually function in very different ways.

The Block List deletes the message if it is going to reach the customer's account. The Allow List actually adds a score of -100 in the spam scanning so that even if an email scores highly for spam it will probably still make it to the Inbox as a score of -100 is quite a large negative score. However, the Block List would still delete these messages where the spam score has been adjusted.

In the context of Block and Allow being in the same menu the customer could Block a Sender/Domain and then reasonably think Allow is removing the address/domain from the Block list when in fact it doesn't. There is a Manage Blocking Rules button but it goes to a page where both the Allow List and Block List are shown and it may still be possible (and likely) the customer won't understand that an address can be in both lists at the same time or what the outcome of this state would be.

When reading a message in the Inbox (or some other non-Spam folder) there might be a case where you want to Allow a sender who you are already successfully receiving emails from if you want to ensure that different emails from them never get moved to the Spam folder (because Spam scanning is also done on message content). It's a similar idea to why Contacts (Runbox 6 only) also get a score of -100 added so that messages are almost certainly never going to go to Spam. It is more likely that a customer would want to Block addresses or domains and that leads to the possible confusion that Allow Sender removes them from the Block List.

Allow Sender is more logical when a message is incorrectly in the Spam folder (a false positive) as you may well want to ensure you receive that sender's messages. It might also make sense when a message is in the Spam folder that you want the Block the sender or domain because it would save you from having to deal with that sender again. However, as Runbox 6 points out when you use this feature it is no guarantee of blocking a particular sender of spam if they use different addresses.

There are many potential options to try and resolve the confusion with these features.

1. Rename the features to make it clearer that these are separate lists and then the manage feature also makes more sense.
2. Only show Allow options in Spam folders.
3. Make the buttons change according to whether a sender is in one of the lists e.g. if a sender or domain is in the Block List make the button say Remove from Block List (granted the feature name is then longer which may have to be dealt with in some way). The same could be done for the Allow List.

There will be other possibilities no doubt. This issue is open for discussion until a decision is made.

[gtandersen]

Excellent write-up. A couple of comments:

1. Rename the features to make it clearer that these are separate lists and then the manage feature also makes more sense.

Since the current standards are "Allowlist" and "Blocklist" we should use these as names for the lists, while we can choose from e.g. "Allowlist sender" and "Add sender to allowlist", and correspondingly "Blocklist sender/domain" and "Add sender/domain to blocklist". Alternatively the longer descriptions can be used as tooltips on hover.

2. Only show Allow options in Spam folders.

Users might move false positives to other folders first, so the Allow options should be shown in all folders.

3. Make the buttons change according to whether a sender is in one of the lists e.g. if a sender or domain is in the Block List make the button say Remove from Block List (granted the feature name is then longer which may have to be dealt with in some way). The same could be done for the Allow List.

Changing the button names depending on context might be confusing, so it might be better to add supplementary information as a tooltip or popup. Blocking a sender and then allowing it could then automatically move it from the former to the latter list, and vice versa.