Pattern to exclude

Administrators can define a list of exceptions to a regular expression, script, or dictionary classifier. This is a list of content that matches the classifier, but should not be considered in the tally of matches. For each content item transmitted, the system tallies the number of instances of the pattern, and subtracts any matches in the Exclude list.

Example:

The pattern is Social Security numbers, the number of matches is 2, and the list of excluded patterns is: 111-11-1111, 222-22-2222, and 333 33 3333 (total of three in the excluded list).

The email contains 7 Social Security numbers: 111-11-1111, 222-33-4444, 444- 55-6666, 555-66-7777, 222-22-2222, 777-88-9999, 333-33-3333.

The number of pattern matches is 7, minus 3 excluded patterns that were found in the email, thus equal to 4. Since 4 is greater than the number of matches (2), the message triggers the action specified in the rule that uses this pattern.