"Bayesian
Spam Filters Uncovered."
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 do drop by http://www.spam-site.com
for more information.
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