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In Worry-Free Business Security, keywords include the following and are used to filter messages:

  • Words (guns, bombs, and so on)

  • Numbers (1,2,3, and so on)

  • Special characters (&,#,+, and so on)

  • Short phrases (blue fish, red phone, big house, and so on)

  • Words or phrases connected by logical operators (apples .AND. oranges)

  • Words or phrases that use regular expressions (.REG. a.*e matches “ace”, “ate”, and “advance”, but not “all”, “any”, or “antivirus”)

Worry-Free Business Security can import an existing list of keywords from a text (.txt) file. Imported keywords appear in the keyword list.

Operators on Keywords

Operators are commands that combine multiple keywords. Operators can broaden or narrow the results of a criteria. Enclose operators with periods (.). For example:

apples .AND. oranges and apples .NOT. oranges

Note:

The operator has a dot immediately preceding and following. There is a space between the final dot and the keyword.

Table 1. Using Operators

Operator

How it Works

Example

any keyword

The Messaging Security Agent searches content that matches the word

Type the word and add it to the keyword list

OR

The Messaging Security Agent searches for any of the keywords separated by OR

For example, apple OR orange. The agent searches for either apple or orange. If content contains either, then there is a match.

Type ".OR." between all the words you want to include

For example,

"apple .OR. orange"

AND

The Messaging Security Agent searches for all of the keywords separated by AND

For example, apple AND orange. The agent searches for both apple and orange. If content does not contain both, then there is no match.

Type ".AND." between all the words you want to include

For example,

"apple .AND. orange"

NOT

The Messaging Security Agent excludes keywords following NOT from search.

For example, .NOT. juice. The agent searches for content that does not contain juice. If the message has “orange soda”, there is a match, but if it contains “orange juice”, there is no match.

Type ".NOT." before a word you want to exclude

For example,

“.NOT. juice”

WILD

The wildcard symbol replaces a missing part of the word. Any words that are spelled using the remaining part of the wildcard are matched.

Note:

The Messaging Security Agent does not support using “?” in the wildcard command “.WILD.”.

Type “.WILD.” before the parts of the word you want to include

For example, if you want to match all words containing “valu”, type “.WILD.valu”. The words Valumart, valucash, and valubucks all match.

REG

To specify a regular expression, add a .REG. operator before that pattern (for example, .REG. a.*e).

See Regular Expressions.

Type ".REG." before the word pattern you want to detect.

For example, “.REG. a.*e” matches: “ace”, “ate”, and “advance”, but not “all”, “any”, nor “antivirus”

Using Keywords Effectively

The Messaging Security Agent offers simple and powerful features to create highly specific filters. Consider the following when creating your Content Filtering rules:

  • By default, the Messaging Security Agent searches for exact matches of keywords. Use regular expressions to search for partial matches of keywords. See Regular Expressions.

  • The Messaging Security Agent analyzes multiple keywords on one line, multiple keywords with each word on a separate line, and multiple keywords separated by commas/periods/hyphens/and other punctuation marks differently. See the following table for more information about using keywords on multiple lines.

  • You can also set the Messaging Security Agent to search for synonyms of the actual keywords.

Table 2. How to Use Keywords

Situation

Example

Match/Non-match

Two words on same line

guns bombs

Matches:

“Click here to buy guns bombs and other weapons.”

Does not match:

“Click here to buy guns and bombs.”

Two words separated by a comma

guns, bombs

Matches:

“Click here to buy guns, bombs, and other weapons.”

Does not match:

“Click here to buy used guns, new bombs, and other weapons.”

Multiple words on multiple lines

guns

bombs

weapons and ammo

When you choose Any specified keywords

Matches:

“Guns for sale”

Also matches:

“Buy guns, bombs, and other weapons”

When you choose All specified keywords

Matches:

“Buy guns bombs weapons and ammo”

Does not match:

“Buy guns bombs weapons ammunition.”

Also does not match:

“Buy guns, bombs, weapons, and ammo”

Many keywords on same line

guns bombs weapons ammo

Matches:

“Buy guns bombs weapons ammo”

Does not match:

“Buy ammunition for your guns and weapons and new bombs”