2012

high percentage of legitimate emails are misclassified
as spam or spam is misclassified as legitimate. To avoid
such misclassification, Norton AntiSpam employs
different filters. Each email filter uses a unique
approach to filter spam email messages from legitimate
email messages.
The email messages that you receive in your email
program undergo scanning through different local
filters of Norton AntiSpam. The local filters use
Whitelist technique, Blacklist technique, and patented
filtering technology to classify email messages as
legitimate or spam. If the local filters classify an email
message as spam, Norton AntiSpam changes the subject
of the email message. Norton AntiSpam then sends the
email message to your email client. If the local filters
fail to classify the email message as spam, Norton
AntiSpam collects information such as signature and
URL hashes of the email message. Norton AntiSpam
then sends this information to the Web Query filter
for additional analysis.
The Web Query filter analyzes the signature and URL
hashes of the email message and then sends the
analysis report to Norton AntiSpam. If the email
message is identified as spam, Norton AntiSpam alters
the subject of the email message and sends it to your
email program. Based on predefined email rules, the
email program then moves the email message to the
Junk folder or the Norton AntiSpam folder.
w
Symantec recommends that you keep the Web Query
option turned on. Turning off the Web Query option
increases your exposure to the spam email messages
that contain phishing or spam URLs.
You can turn on or turn off the Web Query option in
the Norton Internet Security Settings window.
Turning off or turning on Web Query
Norton AntiSpam uses local filters to identify spam
email messages. The email messages that the local
filters do not identify as spam are then scanned
Protecting Internet activities
About Norton AntiSpam
268