US 2008/0168144 A1 · Method of, and a System for, Processing Emails

Abstract

A system for identifying unknown email as spam. An extractor extracts components of email which contains pseudo-random data. This data is passed to the pattern generator which identifies the pattern descriptions found within the data. Pattern descriptions which are found to match components in a store of components from previously encountered spam emails and not in a store from previously encountered non-spam emails by the pattern generator are passed to the pattern matcher. The pattern matcher examines components of unknown email extracted by the extractor. If any component from an unknown email is found to match a pattern description known to the pattern matcher, the email is identified as spam and a signal sent to the spam output, otherwise the email is identified as non-spam and a signal sent to the non-spam output.

Claims26

Dependent claims

An automated method of processing emails comprising:

a) defining a pattern description of a string of characters of an email, the pattern description comprising a collection of pattern matching expressions each selected from a set of such expressions which are capable of specifying with differing degrees of specificity a match with a character or with a collection of characters;
b) testing the pattern description against training sets of strings of characters extracted from emails belonging to a set of spam emails and a set of non-spam emails to determine the effectiveness of the pattern description as a classifier of individual ones of those emails into the respective sets of spam emails and non-spam emails;
and
c) storing, as a reference pattern description, a pattern description determined by step b) as an effective classifier;
and
d) classifying each email to be processed, using at least one reference pattern description stored in step c), into one of the respective sets of spam email and non-spam email.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method of, and a System for, Processing Emails

Life of this patent

Method of, and a System for, Processing Emails

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims26