E-mail Filtering Tool

As e-mail becomes on of the most widely used methods of communication, with it’s ease of use, speed and low cost it has also become the target of advertisers. Just like “snail” mail, e-mail has become prone to junk e-mail but unlike “snail” mail the cost of distributing unsolicited junk e-mail to vast numbers of people is relatively cheap. This has lead to the desire for these unwanted e-mails to be filtered with quickly and with relative ease. In this report existing approaches to information retrieval are explored in an attempt to find a filter solution to deal with the problem of unsolicited junk e-mail. All retrieval models are considered but the vector space model, highly successful in the information retrieval field is chose as the basis for and automatic e-mail filtering program. The system is then evaluated using an extensive range of junk e-mail and shown to be a viable method of filtering.