Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Mac Lab Report

Fighting Spam with Bayesian Filtering

- 2003.02.27

My recent article on spam filtering led reader Lee Williams to send me this message.

A slight variant on your suggestion is based in AI, and it's called bayesian classification. Rather than having the user explain to the machine every keyword it wants to flag, the bayesian classifier simply assigns probabilities to each (word, phrase) based on what class you put the email in. Then, when it sees another email, it is able to use these probabilities to estimate the class it belongs in. It's actually a lot simpler than having the enduser manually create these filters.

Paul Graham discusses this in his "plan for spam".

The key element in both solutions is that they are completely customizable. The existence of individual filters would not necessarily eliminate 100% of spam to each person, but in the aggregate it would mean that each email reaches considerably fewer people, thereby hopefully making it at least somewhat less cost-effective.

If we can write software that recognizes their messages, there is no way they can get around that.

Paul Graham
That article is good reading. I think it would be something I would definitely try. An email client with such filtering would be a great hit, in my opinion. [Editor's note: Apple's Mail client in OS X 10.2 includes a Bayesian filter. I've been using it for over a month and am still training it. dk]

I wonder if a combination of the traditional manual filtering and this would be even better. The manual filtering would allow you to set a rule for specific phrase or person (say your ex for example) which gives a 100% probability of being filtered.

One interesting point related to your statement about the email reaching fewer people - which he doesn't make either - is that if a user actually wanted to receive these emails - after all, someone must be responding to them - they'd like this filter, too, because they'd sort the spam they like into the "keep" folder.

Contrary to Graham's hypothesis, spam need not end. It would become highly targeted at those people most likely to respond to it. The rest of us would ignore it. If everyone had such filters, the things you're most interested in would be the only things that would get through.

Everyone would like this type of filtering. Haters of spam, responders of spam, and senders of spam.

Now for an even spookier thought - apply the same technology to a TiVo with voice recognition and filter your TV commercials the same way.

Jeff Adkins is a science teacher who isn't afraid to state his preferences in computing platforms. In his classroom he has everything from a beige All-in-One to a a G4 XServe, and they all work together nicely. He calls himself the "poster child for technology integration" in the classroom. He was the 2006 Outstanding Educator of the Year for the California Computer Using Educators (CUE) organization. He also maintains a site for astronomy teachers at www.AstronomyTeacher.com.

Recent Mac Lab Reports

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Mac Lab Report copyright © 2000-08 by Jeff Adkins. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.