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Bayesian Spam Filters Explained



Bayesian Spam Filters Explained
 by: Niall Roche

In a word Bayesian spam filters are "intelligent". Bayesian spam filters are intelligent in so far as they're capable of comparing two sets of information and acting on the result. This is in direct contrast to the vast majority of other spam filters who use pre-built rules to decide which e-mail is spam and which is not.

Bayesian spam filters can take one group of legitimate e-mail and another group of spam and compare the values and data of each. The definition of legitimate e-mail that it creates at the end of this comparison session is what it uses going forward to scan your inbox for spam.

FYI Bayesian spam filters are named after Thomas Bayes an 18 century cleric who created something known as Bayes Theorem. In summary Bayes Theorem is as follows: .."in statistical inference to update estimates of the probability that different hypotheses are true, based on observations and a knowledge of how likely those observations are, given each hypothesis." In plain English it looks for obvious repeating patterns to form an "opinion" on something. In spam filter terms that "opinion" becomes a rule which keeps you spam free (or pretty close :-)

The really neat thing about Bayesian filters is that they're capable of learning. For example if they decided to block an e-mail because the filter perceived it as junk but the user marked it as valid mail the Bayesian filter then knows not to block that type of e-mail in the future. So, in time, this type of spam filter learns enough to block spam far more effectively. AOL have embraced this type of spam filter with the launch of AOL 9.0 and AOL Communicator- if the big dog wants it then it must be worthwhile?

So what Bayesian spam filtering options are available to you? Well quite a few to be honest and you'll be pleasantly surprised by some of the names involved :-) The first one on the list is AOL with their AOL Communicator product. The spam filtering features in AOL Communicator and AOL 9 are, to be honest, impressive. Think what you will of the provider themselves AOL Communicator is an excellent product and is suitable for use by both PC and Mac OSX users.

Next up we have Eudora. The nice folks at Qualcomm have designed an excellent e-mail client that also has built in Bayesian spam filtering. I've used Eudora in the past and it's a neat little package. Again the benefits here are advanced integrated spam filtering with your e-mail automatically. Mac OSX and OS9 users are in luck with Eudora providing support for both.

If you'd like to know more about spam filters or just spam in general please drop by our site at www.spam-site.com


About Author Niall Roche :



Niall Roche is the content author and owner of http://www.spam-site.com.
niall@spam-site.com


Article Source: http://www.bharatbhasha.net
Article Url: http://www.bharatbhasha.net/internet-and-computers.php/1191

LD
Other Articles by Niall Roche

•Which Spam Filter Is Best For You
?  by: Niall Roche With the number of spam filtering solutions increasing each week it's getting tougher for consumers to make informed choices in their purchases. There are 3 basic types of spam filters: Integrated Standalone Online We'll look at each type of spam filter and at the end you should be able to decide what spam filter is right for you. Integrated spam filters This type of spam filtering software is the most common. Once installed it sits on top of your existing...

•Is Your Website Blacklisted
?  by: Niall Roche A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of people or companies who have met with the disapproval of others. In the online world a blacklist refers to those people who have been marked as responsible for generating spam in a very big way. Blacklists are also known as blocklists. Blacklists are used to combat spam in a very specific way. When spam is reported to one of the relevant spam fighting organizations the IP address the spam originated from is added to a banned...

•The 4 Ws of Junk E mail
 by: Niall Roche Junk e-mail or spam has become the scourge of the modern computer world. It eats bandwidth. Spam is like a disease. It doesn’t care about age, religion, wealth. It doesn’t discriminate. Junk e-mail affects us all. There are 4 keys to the junk mail question – Who, What, Where and Why. Who they are The typical profile of a junk mail sender is as follows. Male, 18 – 30 years of age, single, technically competent and with little regard for their status as a public nuisance....

•Why Your ISP Takes Bribes From Spammers
 by: Niall Roche The lifeblood of the spammer is email. They need to be able to send lots of it on an ongoing basis to stay in business. High profile spammers can send 80 million pieces of junk email every single day. Yes one single person. ISPs all over the online world have vowed to stop spammers sending such vast amounts of email through their mail servers. Do they really keep their word? All the end user sees is that the spam keeps coming. There must be a loophole there somewhere....

•The Cybermagic of Whitelists
 by: Niall Roche Before we start getting deep into the meat of this article it's important to explain some standard terminology to make sure the rest of this article makes sense. An IP address is a number which identifies your location on the Internet. A blacklist is a list of IP addresses which your antispam software uses to block incoming spam. A whitelist is the exact opposite of a blacklist. A whitelist is a predefined list of IP addresses that are allowed to send email to...

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