Why are default spamassassin rules not being applied to emails we generate?

Question

My company uses a standalone spam-assassin install to test marketing emails, however, mail originating from us does not seem to run the full gamut of test.
For example, Spam assassin has a default rule that flags messages that contain the phrase Dear [Something], and it properly flags spam that I feed it.It does not, however, apply that same rule to in house email I send it.

Is it possible that spam assassin has white-listed us somehow, perhaps because the mail originates in the same domain as the server or receiver?

I believe most of the recent spamassassin questions have been mine, so thanks for bearing with me as I figure this out!

Chance

EDIT Details on our SA setup:
We are piping the emails into the CL with spamc -R < test_email.eml Identical results testing as root or a user, no user_prefs file

Answer 1

Spamassassin can whitelist your domain, but it generally does not (spammers love to forge it). It also has a mechanism for trusting your mail server that might be the issue. Can you provide more details on how you are testing? Are you using SA with a mail server, or just piping your mail into the commandline version of it?

Answer 2

Try "cat test_email.eml | spamassassin -D" for a more verbose output of SA.