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How Does Anti Spam Software Filtering Work?
Have you ever wondered how anti spam software works or what kind of spam filter is used? How does anti virus software detect viruses?
Anyone who has a Gmail account or uses a business email knows that most of the unwanted email, such as spam or virus-laden email is filtered out. Have you ever wondered how anti spam software works or what kind of spam filter is used? How does anti spam software detect viruses? Often, ordinary users don't bother to learn these aspects of email. This is knowledge that can be very useful and informative.
Sniffing out spam
There are two basic methods that a spam filter uses to detect and remove spam. The first is heuristics. This is a learning system that allows the anti spam software to predict which message is spam. This system relies on feedback from the user to check the quarantined messages and tell the system which is or is not spam. The details behind heuristics are "rocket science" and are not perfect. Without the feedback, the system is much less effective.
The group spam filter
The second method that a spam filter will use is much like crowd sourcing; large numbers of users will mark email as spam in their anti spam software. A central repository will keep records of this information and analyze it to track the sources of the messages by email address, IP address, company or sender name, or other identifying data. Future emails from those sources are then considered spam.
The one-two punch
The most effective anti spam software will use both of these methods to increase the accuracy of the spam filter. This is part of how Gmail and other large systems work. In many cases, anti spam software that is distributed to individual users will share spam filter information, with permission, to the central repository to provide updates for future versions of the software.
Anti virus immunology
Anti virus software is much more important. Spam will, at best, annoy a user, or worse; a virus can destroy a system or a whole network. Much like the body's immune system, anti virus technology relies on antibodies in the form of a virus definition file. This file has data patterns of known threats to scan for as the email is retrieved. It then quarantines the message . Additionally, newer systems will use heuristics to predict whether a message contains a virus in the event that there is no filter definition.
