This assessment is done by looking over all the words (or combinationsof words) contained in the email. When it is trained, a computation is made (using Bayes’ theorem)regarding the probability of an email belonging to either the ham or spamcategory. Even though the filter isn’t savvy enough to figure this out atfirst, it can be trained by the user over time. The essence of Bayesian filtering boils down to examining probabilities andfocuses on the probabilities of certain words appearing in ham or spam email.For example, a word such as "Rolex" might appear more frequently in yourspam email, but not in your ham email (unless, of course, you are a watchdealer). Although Bayesian filtering is a technique that can be usedto classify many types of data (it has been applied in a number of otherdisciplines, including the scientific realm, and has been applied in the machinelearning environment in AI), programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird use it todistinguish spam email (junk) from ham email (non-junk). That way, you train the filter onboth ends and ensure that a better percentage of spam will be captured.īayesian filtering first came into vogue when Paul Graham covered it in hisseminal paper "A Plan for Spam"( ),even though Graham himself admits that Bayesian text classification methods havebeen used for years. Butthe important factor to remember here is that you also need to mark your"good" messages by going to Message | Mark | As Not Junk (note that noicon is available for this in the toolbar). In order to trainThunderbird to weed out spam, you have to manually mark messages as Junk byeither clicking the Junk icon or going to File | Message | Mark | As Junk. Thunderbird uses Bayesian filtering to classify junk mail, which is a systemthat requires some degree of user intervention and training (see the FAQ on thenext page for an explanation of how Bayesian filtering works). Luckily, Thunderbird has anexcellent way to keep spam in check.
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Ready to enter a contest that has a prize that looks too good to betrue? It just might be that the contest you are entering will lead you down theprimrose path to an inbox full of spam (not surprisingly, the entry formprobably only asked for your email address). 1 Ifyou put your email address out in the Internet space, it is likely at some pointthat your address will be harvested by spammers and you will become a victim ofspam email. At least I don’t get as much as Bill Gates,who reportedly receives four million emails a day, most of which are spam. Junk, junk, and more junk-it seems that some days I get more spam emailthan I do legitimate email.
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Learn More Buy How to Train Thunderbird’s Junk Mail Filter