Hello! [quote user="cschiller"]
In Mercury/32 v4.01b, I have a content control set with a message test as:
IF RECIPIENT CONTAINS "myemailname@" WEIGHT 60.
It seems spammers easily get around this by having another random email address in the To field, while the actual email address still comes to me. Mercury adds the X-Envelope-To header which has my actual 'myemailname@' email address.
[...]
It does not appear that I can test for a mismatch either.
[/quote] Myself, I have not used Mercury much (because of my low e-mail traffic, so I simply use Pegasus Mail to handle that).
As far as I know, Pegasus Mail has the same syntax for content control than Mercury does. As I have a lot of content control rules (in Pegasus Mail), I am somewhat experienced and can (hopefully) provide an answer, given that Pegasus Mail and Mercury share the same syntax for content control rules.
You said that you could not test for a mismatch in content control. What about an IFNOT-rule? Such a rule could look like that:
IFNOT RECIPIENT CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com" WEIGHT 60
The basic idea is that a message that does not contain your e-mail address anywhere in the most important header entries is suspicious (hence getting a high content control value). A content control rule to check for the absence of your address would also have to check other headers in which your address may occur, like "Cc:", "Bcc:" and "Resent-to:".
The short rule I have mentioned above could be like this then:
IFNOT RECIPIENT CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
ANDNOT HEADER "cc" CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
ANDNOT HEADER "bcc" CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
ANDNOT HEADER "resent-to" CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
WEIGHT 60
You probably get the idea. You may also find some other headers to add to this rule when reading the raw view of your messages.
Note that the headers may not contain your address at all under certain circumstances.
For example: if you are subscribed to a mailing list, the e-mail message you are finally getting may not have your address in it (unless your server has added something like "X-originally-to:" or a similar header). Therefore, a messages from a mailing list will fail the test I have given above - so it is a good idea to add "good" addresses to your Global Whitelist; and as far as mailing list is concerned, a "good" address may also be hidden in the "Sender:"- or the "Return-path:"-header of a mailing list message.
I hope this helps.
Hello! [quote user="cschiller"]<P>In Mercury/32 v4.01b, I have a content control set with a message test as:
IF RECIPIENT CONTAINS "myemailname@" WEIGHT 60.
It seems spammers easily get around this by having another random email address in the To field, while the actual email address still comes to me. Mercury adds the X-Envelope-To header which has my actual 'myemailname@' email address. </P><P>[...]
It does not appear that I can test for a mismatch either.</P>[/quote] Myself, I have not used Mercury much (because of my low e-mail traffic, so I simply use Pegasus Mail to handle that).
As far as I know, Pegasus Mail has the same syntax for content control than Mercury does. As I have a lot of content control rules (in Pegasus Mail), I am somewhat experienced and can (hopefully) provide an answer, given that Pegasus Mail and Mercury share the same syntax for content control rules.
You said that you could not test for a mismatch in content control. What about an IFNOT-rule? Such a rule could look like that:
IFNOT RECIPIENT CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com" WEIGHT 60
The basic idea is that a message that does not contain your e-mail address anywhere in the most important header entries is suspicious (hence getting a high content control value). A content control rule to check for the absence of your address would also have to check other headers in which your address may occur, like "Cc:", "Bcc:" and "Resent-to:".
The short rule I have mentioned above could be like this then:
IFNOT RECIPIENT CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
ANDNOT HEADER "cc" CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
ANDNOT HEADER "bcc" CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
ANDNOT HEADER "resent-to" CONTAINS "good_address_of_yours@invalid.com"
WEIGHT 60
You probably get the idea. You may also find some other headers to add to this rule when reading the raw view of your messages.
Note that the headers may not contain your address at all under certain circumstances.
For example: if you are subscribed to a mailing list, the e-mail message you are finally getting may not have your address in it (unless your server has added something like "X-originally-to:" or a similar header). Therefore, a messages from a mailing list will fail the test I have given above - so it is a good idea to add "good" addresses to your Global Whitelist; and as far as mailing list is concerned, a "good" address may also be hidden in the "Sender:"- or the "Return-path:"-header of a mailing list message.
I hope this helps.