A method of creating a whitelist for processing received e-mail messages. A whitelist is created by software running at an e-mail recipient's computer. The whitelist is constructed using e-mail addresses stored by the recipient (for instance, in an "address book") as well as using the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: information of e-mails sent by the recipient. The subject line of a received message is also checked to see if it matches the subject line of a message recently sent by the user. If so, the sender is added to the whitelist.