Amalgamating an intelligent variant of the gravitational search algorithm with decision trees for email spam detection

Abstract

In today’s interconnected digital world, email remains a primary mode of digital interaction valued for its suitability in official, academic and business communications. However, despite its utility, email faces significant challenges due to the widespread presence of spam in various forms, such as phishing, suspicious attachments and deceptive content. This issue not only affects the efficiency and security of email communication but also poses a barrier to its reliability. Therefore, it is essential to devise effective methods to tackle the escalating count of spam emails. This research work presents an intriguing methodology to combat the persistent problem of email spam. The proposed method, abbreviated as AIGSADT, is an amalgamation of the intelligent variant of the gravitational search algorithm (IGSA) and decision trees (DTs). The machine learning-based DT algorithm is individually inadequate for dealing with the large amount of constructive data on a certain attribute due to its instability and ineffectiveness. The proposed AIGSADT approach integrates the IGSA algorithm, which is effective in handling large amounts of data to detect email spam. This is achieved by constructing decision trees employing gravitational forces as the means of information transfer through mass agents. Here, the intelligent factor of the IGSA algorithm prevents the trapping of GSA agents in local optima by updating their positions based on information provided by the best and worst agents. The performance of the presented AIGSADT approach is analyzed through experiments conducted on various categories available in the Ling spam dataset. These experimental evaluations aim to analyze the significance of different pre-processing modules across different dataset categories. The comparative analysis indicates the supremacy of the proposed approach compared to state-of-the-art methodologies.