{"id":308183,"date":"2005-07-14T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2005-07-14T19:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/?p=308183"},"modified":"2016-10-19T09:40:17","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T16:40:17","slug":"keeping-e-mail-safe-microsoft-co-sponsors-conference-e-mail-anti-spam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/blog\/keeping-e-mail-safe-microsoft-co-sponsors-conference-e-mail-anti-spam\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping E-Mail Safe: Microsoft Co-Sponsors Conference on E-Mail and Anti-Spam"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research<\/em><\/p>\n

Joshua Goodman\u2019s grandfather recently got himself a new computer. He\u2019s a medical writer who had been accustomed to typing his columns and mailing them to his publishers. But the publishers increasingly began to ask that he submit his material via e-mail, so he went out and purchased a new PC.<\/p>\n

Joshua Goodman\u2019s grandfather is 90 years old.<\/p>\n

Such stories\u2014we\u2019ve all heard them\u2014illustrate the importance society has come to place on e-mail in the Internet age. They also underscore the importance of ensuring that e-mail is easy to use and free of irritants such as spam and phishing attacks, which often target the elderly with their scams.<\/p>\n

Goodman, a researcher for the Machine Learning and Applied Statistics (MLAS) Group within Microsoft Research, is among those committed to combating spam and phishing. He is serving as general conference chair for the second Conference on Email and Anti-Spam (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (CEAS), scheduled for July 21-22 at Stanford University, in cooperation with the International Association for Cryptologic Research (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers\u2019 Technical Committee on Security and Privacy (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Microsoft is a co-sponsor of the conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cE-mail has turned into this thing that everyone uses,\u201d Goodman said. \u201cIt\u2019s a large driving force in people\u2019s lives. It\u2019s key for e-commerce, but flaws in it also create huge vulnerabilities. It\u2019s an extremely important area, and there\u2019s a lot of interest and a lot of different areas to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first CEAS, also co-sponsored by Microsoft, was held in Mountain View, Calif., in July 2004, with David Heckerman, MLAS research area manager for Microsoft Research, as general conference chair and Goodman acting as program co-chair. Heckerman also co-authored one of the seminal papers on statistical spam filtering.<\/p>\n

\u201cE-mail is the No. 1 application that people use, and spam continues to be a major problem with e-mail\u201d, Goodman said. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing there wasn\u2019t a conference like this sooner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft authors wrote seven of the 26 papers accepted for this year\u2019s conference, and they\u2019ll be presenting their findings to a gathering significantly different from many such events.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost computer-science conferences are mainly attended by researchers,\u201d Goodman said. \u201cWe\u2019re making this one a little more interdisciplinary. We\u2019ll have a lot of people from industrial research labs and a lot of academic researchers, and we\u2019ll have people from companies that build spam-fighting software.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what great about this conference: You get to present to people who can actually use your ideas, and you get feedback from people who have experience actually deploying these systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Microsoft papers accepted for the conference include:<\/p>\n