Patent ID: 7016939

Claim:
A method for detecting an unwanted message, comprising: (a) receiving an electronic mail message; (b) decomposing text in the electronic mail message; (c) gathering statistics associated with the text using a statistical analyzer; and (d) analyzing the statistics for determining whether the electronic mail message is an unwanted message; wherein the statistics gathered using the statistical analyzer include results of an analysis of a uniform resource locator (URL) in the electronic mail message text; wherein the statistics gathered using the statistical analyzer include results of an analysis of e-mail addresses in the electronic mail message text; wherein the statistics gathered using the statistical analyzer include results of a message header field analysis; wherein the statistics are sent to a neural network engine, wherein the neural network engine compares the statistics to predetermined weights for determining whether the electronic mail message is an unwanted message; wherein the neural network engine is taught to recognize unwanted messages; wherein examples are provided to the neural network engine, wherein the examples are of wanted messages and unwanted messages, and each of the examples is associated with a desired output; wherein each of the examples are processed by the neural network engine for generating the weights, wherein each of the weights is used to denote wanted and unwanted messages; wherein the neural network engine utilizes an adaptive linear combination for adjusting the weights.