[Spambayes] a useful pre-filter for auto-training bayesian systems?

[Ryan Malayter]

I found this interesting. Using the social network as a first step, a
bunch of "definite ham" and "definite spam" messages are listed. These
can be used to train a Bayesian filter which then filters the rest of
the unsures automatically. Very little user intervention would therefore
be required for training, and it cuts in half the number of messages
that must be filtered by the much-more-expensive statistical filter.
 
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0402143 
 
One could even imagine users securely posting their email addressee's
"white lists" by posting SHA-1 hashes instead of actually email
addresses to some public forum. (This would have to be salted, of
course). This could create a meta-social-network.
 
They don't seem to address the issue of a spam that has a forged address
from your own social network, though, which might trip up this whole
social network process.
 

Ryan Malayter
Sr. Network & Database Administrator
Bank Administration Institute
Chicago, Illinois, USA
PGP Key: http://www.malayter.com/pgp-public.txt
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