Patent ID: 7219148

Claim:
A system, that facilitates classifying items in connection with spam prevention, comprising computer-executable components embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, the system comprising: a component that receives a set of the items; a component that identifies intended recipients of the items, and tags a subset of the items to be polled, the subset of items corresponding to a subset of recipients that are known spam fighting users, wherein the subset of the items to be polled is determined before the items are labeled as spam or not spam, as such all items are considered for polling including those items which are designated as spam by a currently employed spam filter; a feedback component that receives information relating to the spam fighter's classification of the polled items, and employs the information in connection with training a spam filter and populating a spam list, wherein the feedback component employs machine learning techniques to train the spam filter; and a component that modifies an item tagged for polling to identify it as a polling item, wherein the modified item comprises voting instructions and any one of at least two voting buttons and links which correspond to at least two respective classes of items facilitate classification of the item by the user, wherein the voting buttons correspond to respective links such that when any one of the voting buttons is selected by the user, information relating to the selected voting button, the respective user, and the item's unigue ID assigned thereto is sent to a database for storage.