Fuzzy logic voting method and system for classifying e-mail using inputs from multiple spam classifiers

A voting method for use in combining outputs of two or more outputs from e-mail classification tools, comprising:

• retrieving a first classification output corresponding to a classification process performed by a first e-mail classifier on an e-mail;
• retrieving a second classification output corresponding to a classification process performed by a second e-mail classifier on the e-mail;
• and
• generating a combined e-mail classification result by inputting the first and second classification outputs into a voting formula comprising:
• Pcombined=(P1×P2)/((P1×P2)+(1−P1)(1−P2))
• wherein Pcombined is the combined e-mail classification result, P1 is the first classification output, and P2 is the second classification output and wherein the combined e-mail classification result, the first classification output, and the second classification outputs have values between 0 and 1.

An e-mail handling system, comprising:

• a set of classification tools for processing an e-mail message and generating a set of classification results indicating whether the tools determined the e-mail message to be spam, the classification results comprising at least two formats;
• a conversion mechanism processing the classification results to convert each of the classification results into a predetermined standardized format, wherein the predetermined standardized format comprises a probability indicating a likelihood the e-mail message is spam;
• and
• a voting mechanism operating to input the standardized classification results as input to a voting formula to generate a combined classification output comprising a probability that the e-mail message is spam.