A method for identifying e-mail messages as being unwanted junk or spam.
The method includes receiving an e-mail message and then identifying
contact and link data, such as URL information, within the content of the
received e-mail message. A blacklist including contact information and/or
link information previously associated with spam is accessed, and the
e-mail message is determined to be spam or to likely be spam based on the
contents of the blacklist. The contact or link data from the received
e-mail is compared to similar information in the blacklist to find a
match, such as by comparing URL information from e-mail content with URLs
found previously in spam. If a match is not identified, the URL
information from the e-mail message is processed to classify the URL as
spam or "bad." The content indicated by the URL information is accessed
and spam classifiers or statistical tools are applied.
