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Spam Reader
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Version
2.5
Spam is a disease. It is a plague of the modern
Internet. Is there a cure?
Various techniques were developed and tried. But
spammers quickly make them obsolete using even newer
tricks. Fortunately, Reverend Tom Bayes, who lived in
the 18th century, has given us a powerful weapon
against spam. He wrote a formula for guessing how
likely it is that something will happen based on two
or more independent events. Several years ago Paul
Graham proposed to use this formula to guess whether
a piece of e-mail contains spam. The new method is
called "Bayesian filtering". Its main difference is
its ability to evolve with time. Spammers develop new
tricks to fool spam-protection systems, but Bayesian
filters learn to catch these tricks immediately.
Spam Reader is an MS Outlook plugin that extends this
powerful e-mail software's functionality with a
Bayesian spam filter. There is no need to run an
external program. Spam Reader fully integrates into MS
Outlook. After installing it, you will see a new
toolbar and a new item in the main Outlook menu.
Spam Reader analyzes each message when you receive it
and puts it into the Spam folder as needed. Spam
Reader does not break your existing Outlook filtering
rules. This allows you to safely use it with multiple
mail list folders and usenet accounts. Spam Reader
ships with a large database of known junk e-mail
fingerprints. It is trained on a database of more than
20,000 spam messages. Updates are provided from the
Spam Reader web site on a regular basis.
In addition to using the pre-installed spam database,
you can create your own spam protection rules. This
doesn't require any special knowledge. Just point at a
message and tell Spam Reader whether it should treat
mail like that as spam or not. You can also add mail
senders into the White and the Black lists.
Don't waste your time reading junk mail. Thanks to
Reverend Tom Bayes and Spam Reader, we now have a cure
against spam.
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