Seminar on “web-mail filter”

Introduction

In today’s world electronic mail (or popularly known as e-mail) is a very powerful medium for transferring messages to other users.

Like every powerful medium it is prone to be misused. One such case of misuse is the posting of

unsolicited emails known as spam.

Adverse effects of spam

Too noisy Inbox. Misleading information distribution.

Virus spreading programs and Mails

Wastage of allocated memory space for Inbox.

Web-mail filter??????

Spam filtering comes in two forms

Server side filtering

Client side filtering

The filtering occurs on the server before the emails are seen.

User filters that are created by the email client, redirects emails that are 'marked as Spam’ to a specific 'Spam' folder

Server side filtering

Recognizing the words that are likely to appear as spam.

universal virus definitions.

universal block list of IP addresses(UBL).

Client side filtering Checking the mails against Subject and from Email ID specified

by the user.

Checking the mails against the size limit of the mail specified by

the User.

Reporting a message as “spam” by the user.

 

Architecture

Module based approach

Admin: This module deals with the management of the application by a

person called Administrator who is responsible for taking all the mails coming

to the people working in the organization, and invoking the filtering mechanism

can also specify UBL IP addresses and Universal Virus definitions in order to

protect the systems from attack.

User:This module deals with user processing. In this module user can

specify what he doesn’t want.

Filtering: This module deals with the major task of Mail Filter

Spam filtering mechanism in gmailHow messages are marked as Spam inGmail???

Gmail has an automated system that helps detect spam by identifying viruses and suspicious messages and learning from what Gmail users like us commonly mark as spam.

why that a particular message in GMAIL is placed in Spam?

Phishing scams

Messages from an unconfirmed sender.

Message content is empty

Messages you sent to Spam

Administrator-set policies

Phishing scams

Some spammers send fraudulent messages that try to trick you into sharing personal information like passwords or credit card numbers. This practice is called phishing

Messages from an unconfirmed sender

Spammers can forge a message to make it

look like it's sent by a real website or

company that you might trust. To help

protect you from such messages, Google

tries to verify the real sender using email

authentication

Message content is empty

An email with no content in the subject and body of

the message might be classified as spam.

Messages you sent to Spam

You previously marked these messages as spam by

clicking the "Report spam" or "Report phishing" button

Administrator-set policies

If your organization uses Gmail, the administrator within

your group can decide what messages will be marked as spam.

AdvantagesIncreased productivity

Personalized filter.

Phishing scam protection

White listing capabilities.

Users who receive a low volume of email will have to wait

longer to establish an adequate database.

Word based filters and list based filters have lots of

disadvantages

Disadvantages

Email filter is used to inspect outgoing email at some

companies to ensure that employees comply with

appropriate laws.

Malware can comprise a user's sensitive private data

by capturing bank account information, usernames

and passwords. Spam blocker applications can assist a

user in preventing these types of PC contaminations.

Applications

Conclusion

Web mail filter is a mechanism for classifying

message as either spam or non-spam.

Its reduces the overhead for the users by filtering

out unwanted or uninvited messages in the inbox.

It provides security for your mailbox by filtering

out contaminated messages.

Based on the future security issues, security can be

improved using emerging technologies.

A survey on spam filtering:www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-spam_techniques Defeating spam:www.techtarget.com Email Spam Filtering:Gordon V. Cormack www.howstuffworks.com www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf

References