Image Based Spam Blocking
AssigneeSonicWALL, Inc.
InventorBong Gyoune Kim
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A fingerprint of an image identified within a received message is generated following analysis of the message. A spam detection engine identifies an image within a message and converts the image into a grey scale image. The spam detection engine analyzes the grey scale image and assigns a score. A fingerprint of the grey scale image is generated based on the score. The fingerprint may also be based on other factors such as the message sender's status (e.g. blacklisted or whitelisted) and other scores and reports generated by the spam detection engine. The fingerprint is then used to filter future incoming messages.
Claims10
A method for filtering an image based message, comprising:
- receiving an image based message from a sender,
- executing instructions stored in memory, wherein execution of the instructions by a processor:
- converts an image located within the received image based message into a grey scale image,
- analyzes the grey scale image to identify one or more text lines associated with the grey scale image,
- assigns a score to the grey scale image based on the presence or absence of a text line within the grey scale image;
- and
- filtering the received image based message based on the assigned score.
A system for filtering an image based message, comprising:
- a processor to execute instructions,
- a spam detection engine executable by the processor to:
- convert an image located within the image based message into a grey scale image,
- analyze the grey scale image to identify one or more text lines associated with the grey scale image,
- assign a score to the grey scale image based on the presence or absence of a text line within the grey scale image;
- and
- filtering the received image based message based on the assigned score;
- and
- a memory to store:
- the spam detection engine,
- the grey scale image;
- and
- the score assigned to the grey scale image.
A computer-readable storage medium having embodied thereon a program, the program being executable by a processor to perform a method for filtering an image based message, the method comprising:
- receiving an image based message from a sender;
- converting an image located within the received image based message into a grey scale image;
- analyzing the grey scale image to identify one or more text lines associated with the grey scale image;
- assigning a score to the grey scale image based on the presence or absence of a text line within the grey scale image;
- and
- filtering the received image based message based on the assigned score.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.