Gates on SmartScreen

Bill Gates explained more about the company's SmartScreen spam-filtering technology, unveiled last week, in a Washington Post op/ed piece published today:

"We are making progress with new software derived from advanced work in the field of machine learning -- the design of systems that learn from data and grow smarter over time. The software learns from a vast and continually growing archive of e-mail provided by nearly 200,000 of our e-mail customers who have volunteered to classify millions of messages as legitimate or not. This feedback enables us to identify spam with unprecedented precision based on key words, message structure, even the time it was sent -- more than 500,000 characteristics in all. Early reports have indicated that this Microsoft SmartScreen technology is blocking as much as 95 percent of spam, and we expect it to get even smarter as it learns from a continuing flow of feedback. Many other e-mail providers also are making great strides in creating technology that better protects people from spam."