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Collaborative
SpamFighting
| The
Cloudmark SafetyBar
Community
Here's how it works
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Collaborative
SpamFighting
SafetyBar is the first and largest group of people - more than half
a million collaborating in real-time to fight spam. Because of its
community based peer-to-peer filtering model, SafetyBar keeps over
95 percent of spam out of your inbox automatically, so spam doesn't
steal time from your day, or money from your wallet.
If a spam does
slip through to your inbox, simply click the Block button to remove
the message from your inbox and notify the entire SafetyBar community
immediately. This automatically helps stop that spam message from
being sent to other members of the SafetyBar community.
Similarly, if
you think a certain message is not spam, you can click the Unblock
button and share that intelligence with the network. SafetyBar has
a Truth Evaluation System (TeS) to guarantee that only valid spam
messages are blocked. SafetyBar never deletes an email; it is just
moved to the "spam" folder so you never lose email you
care about.
The Cloudmark SafetyBar Community
Spam is the name for the annoying unsolicited commercial email (UCE)
we receive that promises a livelier sex life, a high-paying work-at-home
job, and a lower mortgage rate. The people that send this junk email
make money when a very small fraction of the recipients respond
to the advertisement and buy something. To reach the maximum number
of people, and maximize their income, the spammers send the same
message to millions of email boxes. Because the same spam message
lands in everyone's box, only one person needs to report the message
for it to be filtered by SafetyBar. So, each of your reported spam
messages to SafetyBar can instantly help thousands of other people
in the SafetyBar community.
When a spam
message is reported by a SafetyBar user, the message is sent to
a central computer or database that records the spam. When the other
SafetyBar users download their email, the software checks the new
messages to see if it contains reported spam. If the system finds
a spam message, SafetyBar moves it to the Spam Folder. This process
ensures that your Inbox remains clean of spam messages and that
none of your email is lost or blocked.
The collaborative
SafetyBar community is composed of thousands of individual users
and Internet Service Providers who receive millions of email daily.
Today, their collective reporting power captures over 90 percent
of all spam sent out on the Internet, but that isn't enough. To
eradicate spam completely from our Inboxes, we need thousands of
new reporters. To ensure that each SafetyBar reporter only reports
UCE, each participant is ranked according to the number of good
reports they have made.
Here is how it works
When the message comes in, SafetyBar generates a unique fingerprint
of that message. The fingerprint is a one-way hash, or unique string
of numbers that represents the email and can absolutely NOT be decoded.
This unique
fingerprint of the message is sent to the server where it asks the
database if this message is spam. The server comes back to the client
with a confidence level of how sure it is that the message is spam
by checking it with the other fingerprints in the database.
If the same
signature has been reported to the SafetyBar database, this indicates
that the message is spam and it is consequently moved from the member's
Inbox to the Spam folder.
If a spam slips
through, the SpamFighter can use the "Block" button (vs.
delete) to remove it from their inbox and report it to SafetyBar
to help themselves and the community. Again a unique fingerprint
of the body of the message is generated and sent back to the server.
Here is where TeS, or the trust system comes into play to ensure
that only valid spam messages are blocked. SafetyBar looks at the
reputation of the person that blocked the message and depending
on their individual trust rating; a confidence level is applied
to that message to decide whether it should be blocked for the entire
community. Each person starts with a zero trust rating and generates
trust based on several factors including how accurate their reports
are and the number of reports overtime. This process happens instantly
taking less than 3 minutes to stop a spam message that's new to
the system for the entire community.
More on Fingerprints
SafetyBar uses a combination of several fingerprints, also known
as algorithms, or hashes to run the most effective collaborative
spamfighting solution, one that along with the trust system (TeS)
keeps spammers from compromising the system. For example, one fingerprint
analyzes the entire message body blocking what spammers care about
which is the marketing message. Another is a similarity algorithm
so that a message that has been identified as spam and then altered
can still be detected. Another is random to keep spammers from gaming
the system and so on.
Truth Evaluation
System (TeS)
SafetyBar maintains the integrity of the pool of user-reported spam
messages through its Truth Evaluation System (TeS). Each SafetyBar
user is rated according to a number of factors including volume
of spam reported, report accuracy and relevance. Simply, long-time,
trusted users carry more weight in spam identification than new,
un-trusted reporters. To increase your trust rating and contribution
to SafetyBar, all you have to do is make regular, accurate spam
reports.
Security / Privacy
The Cloudmark SafetyBar service places the highest importance on
your email privacy and security. During the filtering of email for
Spam, the legitimate email on your computer is never transmitted
or shared with anyone - your email never leaves your computer. All
the spam checking occurs in your email program and no one can ever
view your messages. The unwanted spam and Unblocked messages that
you report to SafetyBar are only seen by the SafetyBar computers
at Cloudmark, and are accessible only by a small staff of dedicated
anti-spam technicians. No one else, including SafetyBar users, have
access to your reported messages.
Legitimate
Email
SafetyBar ensures that your legitimate email remains private by
keeping it on your computer - no one, including SafetyBar users
and Cloudmark, ever see the legitimate messages that you check with
SafetyBar. When the system filters your mail, the Cloudmark SafetyBar
software creates a message digest or signature of each message.
Here is
an example of a message digest or signature: 52dceed1ee0933e7de4f4a516ad6d39d5688fcc9
The message
digest is a unique, but indistinguishable, string of numbers that
represents your email. If the same signature has been reported to
the SafetyBar database, this indicates that the message is spam
and it is consequently moved from your Inbox to your Spam folder.
Spam Email
Unlike legitimate email, most people don't care if others see their
unwanted spam messages. Although generally true, Cloudmark SafetyBar
even protects the anonymity and privacy of each spam reporter. When
an unwanted spam message is reported to SafetyBar, the entire message
is sent to the central computer. The system then creates a message
digest and stores it in the database. No SafetyBar user ever sees
your spam or knows who submitted the message. Only Cloudmark has
access to the original spam message. SafetyBar also receives full
versions of messages that are Unblocked.
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