Bayesian Whitelisting: Finding the Good Mail Among the Spam

Eric — Sun, 29 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0400

The biggest challenge with spam filtering is reducing false positives--that is, finding the good mail among the spam. Even the best spam filters occasionally mistake legitimate e-mail for spam. For example, in some recent tests, bogofilter processed 18,000 e-mails with only 34 false positives. Unfortunately, several of these false positives were urgent e-mails from former clients. This unpleasant mistake wasn't necessary--the most important of these false positives could have been avoided with an automatic whitelisting system.

Random Hacks: Bayesian Whitelisting: Finding the Good Mail Among the Spam

Bayesian Whitelisting: Finding the Good Mail Among the Spam