SVM-Based spam filter with active and online learning

A realistic classification model for spam filtering should not only take account of the fact that spam evolves over time, but also that labeling a large number of examples for initial training can be expensive in terms of both time and money. This paper address the problem of separating legitimate emails from unsolicited ones with active and online learning algorithm, using a Support Vector Machines (SVM) as the base classifier. We evaluate its effectiveness using a set of goodness criteria on TREC2006 spam filtering benchmark datasets, and promising results are reported.