Spring Into Linux®

Spam

Spam, called junk mail by Mozilla, is unsolicited mail that shows up in your mailbox. Most people prefer not to receive spam. However, most people prefer receiving spam to not receiving legitimate mail. Consequently, spam filters must balance between letting too much mail through, thereby missing some spam, and not letting enough mail through, thereby identifying some “real” mail as spam (false positives).

Mozilla includes a Bayesian spam filter. This type of spam control looks at a sample of real mail and a sample of junk mail and uses statistical analysis of the contents of the messages to identify spam. Consequently, the more messages of junk/non-junk status it has to analyze, the better it gets at recognizing spam.

The Mozilla junk mail ...