PopFile Revisited: another thousand messages received; a new version installed

Today we reached another thousand. After printing and resetting the report, I loaded POPfile’s new version. I’ll certainly keep you informed….

Continuing in the same format I used in my earlier note about PF:

Fourth Thousand

This test span ended November 21 at 1,000 messages.

• 26 (2.6%) were sent to the wrong bucket.
  • 97.4% were sent to the right bucket….
• 415 (41.5%) were spam. Again: Wow!
• 4 (0.4%) were probably virus-laden.
• 4 (0.4%) were bounced email.
• Auction seems to be fully solved; 39 messages, with one false positive and one false negative.
• The Vendor category may have finally improved: 14 messages; only three errors.
• Lists looks better: Ten false positives and no false negatives associated with 51 messages.
• A new category, created (with my new e-mail address) to service this weblog, had 8 errors–to go with seven messages. New categories are always problems….

All in all, that’s a rather impressive performance. The increasing spam count is also rather impressive; after all, I added this tool to my kit because the junk seemed to be getting out of hand.

The new POPfile version has a thoroughly-revamped back end, and some modifications to the code in the engine. We’ll see how it goes.

Jon Udell’s also talking about using Bayesian categorizers, at both a higher level of abstraction and greater detail. Worth a look.