offensive language - Alternative term to "Blacklist" and "Whitelist"


In short, my company is developing a management tool for managing SIM cards. One of the features of the tool is to block the SIM card if it's put into a disallowed device by device IMEI validation.


The feature for this was mocked up using the terms blacklist and whitelist. However, after a while someone raised the point that these terms could feel a bit controversial.


The advantage of using these terms is that they are clean and easily understandable, but then again if they could invoke any racial issues we don't want anything to do with them.


So far we've come up with these possible alternatives:



  • Blocked List

  • Unblocked List

  • Allowed List


And honestly, we're not very excited for any of these words.


Do you feel that these words are controversial? Are there better words we could use?



Answer



Blacklist and whitelist are fine, I don't think they are in any way racist, unless you're actually using them for discrimination.


Wikipedia's IMEI entry repeatedly uses blacklist for blocking stolen phones.


Many mobile operators, such as Vodaphone, O2, T-Mobile and Orange, all use blacklist for exactly the same thing as your use.


Whitelist is also widely used by many other applications for adding known, safe things.


If you really, really must avoid these industry standard words, blocklist has the same meaning and is nearly a homonym. For the antonym, I've seen "safe senders list" for email, so I suggest safelist to succintly convey the required meaning.


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