System and method for identifying and filtering junk e-mail messages or spam based on URL content

摘要

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.