CEAS 2008 Spam Filter Challenge

August 5th -- August 8th, 2008

Live Challenge Overview

• 72-hour live email spam competition
• Live email stream, delivered by standard protocols (SMTP, IMAP, POP)
• Remote and on-site participants welcome
• Server, appliances, proxies, personal filters welcome

Lab Evaluation Overview

• Filter evaluation on several real-life, private email collections
• Backwards-compatible with the TREC spam-filter interface
• Complete feedback and (more realistic) limited feedback training regimes
• Filters will also be evaluated on the live email stream (apples-to-apples comparison)
• Personal filters, statistical filters, past TREC submissions welcome

Links and Information

• Call for Participation.
• Competition Registration (now closed)
• Official Live Challenge Rules and Guidelines.
• Official Lab Evaluation Rules and Guidelines.
• Live Challenge Environment and Filter Configuration.
• 2008 Results slideshow.
• 2008 Interactive results viewer.

Background Information

• Presentation by Richard Segal at the MIT Spam Conference

Mailing List

• Please fill out the form at http://eight.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/ceas-challenge or send an e-mail to rsegal@us.ibm.com to join the competition mailing list.

Key dates:

• Competition registration open May, 2008.
• Toolkit available June, 2008.
• Test stream beginning July 1st, 2008.
• Filter submissions for lab evaluation due: August 5th, 2008 at 14:00 GMT.
• Live competition starts: August 5th, 2008 at 14:00 GMT
• Live competition ends: August 8th, 2008 at 14:00 GMT.

Organizers

• Richard Segal (IBM Research)
• Gordon Cormack (University of Waterloo)
• Andrej Bratko (Jozef Stefan Institute)