← Glossary

What is Greylisting?

Deliberately rejecting the first delivery attempt from an unknown sender and accepting the retry.

How it works in practice

Legitimate servers retry after a few minutes; many spam tools don't. For you it appears as a temporary 4xx and the message arrives later, with no action needed.

The common mistake

Treating a greylisting deferral as a block and changing infrastructure.

Check it yourself

Related terms

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