Person Profile Spam Filtering Reduces False Positives

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing spam filtering systems often incorrectly identify legitimate messages as spam, leading to false positives and the loss of important communications.

Innovation Solution

A method and system that uses person profiles generated from scanning messages across different accounts and sources to identify false positive spam messages by comparing sender and recipient addresses with stored profiles, allowing for automated rescuing of misclassified messages.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Object-affected harmful factors

If spam filtering is applied to identify and block unsolicited messages, then spam messages are filtered out, but legitimate messages are incorrectly identified as spam (false positives)

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvespam messagesVSAvoidfalse positive rate
Core Design Contradiction:
Object-affected harmful factorsVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system pre-processes incoming messages by extracting sender information, message content, and metadata before applying spam filtering rules. This preliminary analysis includes identifying the sender's domain, checking against known spam patterns, and gathering contextual information that will be used in subsequent filtering stages, allowing for more accurate classification

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces an intermediary verification layer between the spam filter and the message delivery system. This intermediary component analyzes messages that are borderline cases or have low confidence scores, using additional heuristics and contextual information to make final determination, thereby reducing false positives while maintaining spam blocking effectiveness

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Measurement precision

If multiple message attributes are analyzed to improve spam detection accuracy, then spam identification improves, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvespam detection accuracyVSAvoidsystem complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Measurement precisionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The spam filtering system is divided into multiple independent modules, each responsible for analyzing specific message attributes such as sender information, subject line, body content, and metadata. Each module produces a score or classification that is then combined by a decision-making component, allowing for comprehensive analysis while maintaining manageable system complexity through modular design

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

Different levels of analysis are applied to different message attributes based on their importance and reliability. Critical attributes like sender domain and message headers receive more rigorous analysis, while less important attributes receive lighter processing. This localized quality approach optimizes resource allocation and reduces unnecessary computational complexity

Inventive Principle:
Principle #3Local quality

Data Source

PatentUS10911383B2Spam filtering and person profiles
Publication Date: 2021.02.02 YAHOO ASSETS LLC
  • US10911383B2 patent drawing
  • US10911383B2 patent drawing
  • US10911383B2 patent drawing

AI summary

Systems and methods to reduce false positives in spam filtering. In one aspect, a method includes automatically generating profiles for persons identified in messages, such as incoming and outgoing e-mails. Messages flagged as spam can be checked against the profile to identify false positives.