Techniques to select and prioritize application of junk email filtering rules

The apparatus of claim 6, the recipient profile comprising at least one of:

• a country frequency with which the recipient communicates with a country of origin by email;
• a language frequency with which the recipient communicates in a language by email;
• or
• a category associated with the recipient.

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• receiving an email message for a recipient at an email server;
• extracting email characteristics from the received email;
• retrieving global filtering rule statistics;
• retrieving a recipient profile for the recipient;
• selecting a subset of rules from a set of filtering rules according to at least one of the email characteristics, the global filtering rule statistics, or the recipient characteristics;
• prioritizing the subset of rules;
• and
• applying the prioritized subset of rules from highest priority to lowest priority until a determination of whether the message is spam is reached.

At least one computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed, cause a system to:

• extract email characteristics from a received email message;
• retrieve global spam rule statistics;
• retrieve a recipient profile for an intended recipient of the message;
• prioritize a set of filtering rules according to at least one of the email characteristics, the global spam rule statistics, or the recipient profile;
• and
• apply the prioritized set of rules sequentially to the message from highest priority to lowest, until a determination of whether the message is spam is made.