Patent ID: 8554847

Claim:
A method of detecting spam in incoming emails, the method comprising: defining a plurality of filtering profiles for application to incoming email messages, wherein each filtering profile in the plurality of filtering profiles is configured to filter the incoming email messages according to a different set of filtering rules; assigning a first filtering profile from the plurality of filtering profiles to a user; applying rules of the set of filtering rules of the first filtering profile to the incoming email messages; delivering the incoming email messages to the user based on the application of the rules; tracking actions performed by the user on two or more of the incoming email messages; using the tracked actions to determine a first performance score; wherein the first performance score indicates how accurately the first filtering profile is filtering incoming email messages of the user; wherein tracking the actions performed by the user on the two or more of the incoming email messages includes at least tracking a first set of actions of a first type performed by the user on one or more of the incoming email messages, and tracking a second set of actions of a second type performed by the user on one or more other of the incoming email messages; wherein the first type is different than the second type; wherein both the first set of actions and the second set of actions include only actions that indicate that the first filtering profile incorrectly filtered email messages that should not have been filtered; in response to determining that the user performed an action that belongs to the first set of actions and that indicates that the first filtering profile incorrectly filtered an email message that should not have been filtered, affecting the first performance score by a first amount; in response to determining that the user performed an action that belongs to the second set of actions and that indicates that the first filtering profile incorrectly filtered an email message that should not have been filtered, affecting the first performance score by a second amount; wherein the first amount is different than the second amount; assigning a second filtering profile from the plurality of filtering profiles to the user based at least in part on the first performance score as affected by at least one of the first amount or the second amount; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.