A multiagent-based peer-to-peer network in java for distributed spam filtering

Abstract

With the growing amount of internet users, a negative form of sending email spreads that affects more and more users of email accounts: Spamming. Spamming means that the electronic mailbox is congested with unwanted advertising or personal email. Sorting out this email costs the user time and money. This paper introduces a distributed spam filter, which combines an off-the-shelf text classification with multiagent systems. Both the text classification as well as the multiagent platform are implemented in Java. The content of the emails is analyzed by the classification algorithm 'support vector machines'. Information about spam is exchanged between the agents through the network. Identification numbers for emails which where identified as spam are generated and forwarded to all other agents connected to the network. These numbers allow agents to identify incoming spam email. In this way, the quality of the filter increases continuously.