Content Filter rule based on text string in a hyperlink not working.

Question asked by Melvyn Duckmanton - 6/16/2022 at 3:06 PM

Answered

I want to filter some spam emails that all contain a similar hyperlink. The format of the hyperlink is along the lines of this:

<ahref="h t t p://www.website.com/t/click/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/bbbbbbbb">

(Actual characters replaced above by aaa.... etc)

The content of these hyperlinks varies from email to email except for the aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa part which is common to all of the emails so I want to use this part to trigger a filter, but when I set up a simple Content Filter rule in my SmarterMail settings it doesn't work. By experimentation I've found that the rule works fine with any plain text string in the email but won't recognise any of the text string inside the opening and closing < . . . > hyperlink brackets.

Is there a way text contained in a hyperlink can be used as a filter trigger, or am I missing something?

7 Replies

Reply to Thread

Zach Sylvester Replied

6/21/2022 at 7:27 AM

Employee Post

Hey Melvyn,

Thanks for reaching out to the community. I would recommend using a global spam filter along with a regular expression[regex] to accomplish this goal.

Please let me know if this helps.

Kind Regards,

Zach Sylvester Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Melvyn Duckmanton Replied

6/21/2022 at 12:49 PM

Just to be clear . . .

I'm using SmarterMail Enterprise 15.7 (provided as part of Doteasy's web hosting service)

and constructed a rule as follows:

Settings>Filtering>Content Filtering

Anywhere in message

Contains specific words or phrases

*aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa* (where aaa...etc represents the relevant string in an html hyperlink)

Move message

The filter is not triggering.

Is what you are suggesting different?

Regards

Mel

Tony Scholz Replied

6/27/2022 at 1:35 PM

Employee Post Marked As Answer

Hello Melvyn,

The Global Spam Rule that Zach was referencing is in the ( system settings -> security -> Antispam Administration -> Custom Rules ).

Using this you can do a RegEx scan ( see image below ) and assign a SPAM weight to the message.

Please let me know if you have any questions on this. Thank you

Tony

Tony Scholz System/Network Administrator SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Melvyn Duckmanton Replied

6/28/2022 at 12:53 PM

I appear to have a different user interface which does not have the 'Security' option shown in yours. Nor can I find an option to use regular expressions anywhere in my 'Filtering' sub-menus, or anywhere else for that matter.

echoDreamz Replied

6/28/2022 at 12:58 PM

Because you are logged in as a user, you need to login as the system administrator to access the anti-spam settings they are referring to, which would not be available to you I would assume since you are an end-user.

Tony Scholz Replied

6/28/2022 at 1:00 PM

Employee Post

Hello Melvyn,

The interface you are seeing is for domain admins. The one I was in is for system level admins. You will need to log in as a system level admin, If this is a hosted service you may not have access to this panel and will need to work with your hosting provider.

Thank you

Tony

Tony Scholz System/Network Administrator SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com