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Word Parts Matching with Content Filter
Problem reported by Daniel Short - 1/27/2015 at 3:28 PM
Submitted
I'm having an issue with a content filter that's blocking email it should. For example, this is a content filter on Subject or Body:
 
pfizer
viagra
cialis
quibids
garcinia
cambogia
nitroxin
 
This is filtering out emails with the word "specialist", because it contains the phrase cialis.
 
What can I do to ensure that the content filter doesn't match word parts, but instead matches entire words?
 
Dan

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0
Employee Replied
Employee Post
Good day Daniel,
 
I have configured a content filter based upon the details that you have provided. I was able to see the issue with the 'partial' word being detected. I'll look into this further and see if this would be considered a feature enhancement request. I'll check on the wildcards settings as well.
 
Thank You.
 
 
 
0
Employee Replied
Employee Post
Good afternoon Daniel,
 
I researched this further and the current function of finding words or phrases that contain partial letters is not a current feature. You may want to consider configuring a Custom Rule under the AntiSpam Administration Spam check section. You can choose the Custom Rule spam check and add a new rule to include the word Cialis and provide a weight of 10.  You can alter the details accordingly but this will act as a good basis of filtering out the specific words.
 
Thank You.
 
0
John Bird Replied
Hi, all
I also had this problem and at first couldn't believe that I could not filter out content that would reject specialist because it contained cialis. I tried putting the word in double quotes, surrounding it with spaces etc. Nothing worked.
 
This it occurred to me that the solution was to create another filter rule with the word “specialist” in it and do nothing if found then place this rule at the top because once a rule has been hit all others are ignored.
 
John.
 
1
Scarab Replied
RegEx is your friend for such things!
 
To capture "cialis" without catching instances of "specialist" you need to use RegEx instead of Contains and define the beginning with ^ and the end with $ (and it is recommended to use (?i) to make the string Case Insensitive). So for example, you would use:
 
^(?i)CIALIS$
 
Not sure if the Content Filters can use RegEx but the Custom Rules in Smartermail certainly can.
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Andrew Lupton Replied
I've tried a regex of ^(?i)joesmith$ (for example) in custom rules for the return-path and it does not catch the sender name (joesmith@spamdomain.net), I tried ^(?i)joesmith$, \^(?i)joesmith$, .+\^(?i)joesmith$, ^joesmith/i$ and others and it simply doesn't work.
Can you elaborate a bit more on the different syntax in SmarterMail?

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