Email Spam Detection Using Hybrid Model

Abstract

Email spam as you know; initially looking harmless, those endless get rich quickly scams and false lottery wins could seem benign. Behind the scenes, however, spam is a real pain for both companies and people. It wastes money, clogs inboxes, and more dangerously can slip in phishing attempts or malware. Researchers have tried everything from simple keyword filters to some rather sophisticated artificial intelligence over the years in an attempt to fight it. The truth is, though, spammers are smart. Your filter\'s degree of predictability will determine how quickly they can evade it. This study helps with this. Rather than depending only on one type of model, such as a CNN or a simple LSTM, we chose to vary things and produce a hybrid deep learning system. CNNs are excellent at identifying small patterns in text, BiLSTMs help understand the whole context of a message (what came before and after), and then, just for that extra punch, we brought in Reinforcement Learning to let the model actually learn from its own mistakes over time. Think of it like assembling a team where each player brings a special ability. Still, we did not stop there, not even near. In the last section of this work and this is the bit I\'m most proud of we developed a custom reward-based attention mechanism that changes which parts of an email receive more focus based on whether the model obtained the previous predictions right or wrong. It\'s sort of like teaching the model to \"pay more attention next time,\" based on past behavior: a bit like how we humans learn following a mistake. I built everything to run on Google Colab with live demos, tested the model on a mix of standard and hybrid datasets, and ensured the architecture is lightweight enough for practical use. So the outcome is Not only does this system know how to adapt but it also catches spam better than many current systems. And that might just be the secret to remain ahead in a world where spam keeps changing its strategies.

Introduction

Spam emails remain a persistent digital threat, evolving from simple junk to sophisticated phishing, malware, and identity theft vectors. Traditional spam filters—rule-based or classical ML—are inadequate against today's AI-powered, context-aware spam tactics.

???? Proposed Solution

The paper introduces a hybrid deep learning model for spam detection that combines:

• CNN for detecting local spam patterns (e.g., spammy phrases),

• BiLSTM for capturing semantic and contextual flow in both directions,

• Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based attention to dynamically focus on important features and adapt over time.

This model is designed to be:

• Lightweight and edge-compatible, usable on common platforms like Google Colab

• Transparent and accessible, unlike closed-source filters (e.g., Gmail’s)

• Adaptive, learning from misclassifications via an RL feedback loop

???? Research Methodology

A dual-pronged approach was used:

1. Theoretical Review: Analyzed over 50 peer-reviewed papers (2015–2024) on spam detection and deep learning methods.

2. Practical Implementation: Developed and tested a hybrid model using TensorFlow/Keras on:

   • SpamAssassin

   • Enron Spam Dataset

   • A custom hybrid dataset to reflect real-world spam

Key evaluation metrics:

• Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1-score

• Generalization across datasets

• Efficiency and lightweight deployment feasibility

???? Model Architecture

A multi-stage architecture combining the strengths of three key components:

• Input: Preprocessed padded sequences using FastText embeddings

• Output: Real-time spam classification with improved adaptability

???? Preprocessing & Dataset Details

• Cleaning: Removed HTML, headers, symbols

• Tokenization: Transformed into word sequences

• Stemming, stopword removal, and padding for consistent input

?? Training Details

• Train/Test Split: 80/20 with a 10% validation subset

• Hardware: Google Colab with NVIDIA T4 GPU (16GB RAM)

• Tools: TensorFlow 2.11, Keras, NLTK, Pandas, NumPy

Key Hyperparameters:

• Embedding: 64-dim FastText

• CNN: 64 filters, kernel size 3

• BiLSTM Units: 64 (bidirectional)

• Dropout: 0.3

• Optimizer: Adam / RMSprop

• Learning Rate: 0.001

• RL reward: updated every batch

• Epochs: 5–10 (with early stopping)

???? Results & Insights

• High accuracy across all datasets, with strong generalization ability

• Low false positive rate, especially on borderline or ambiguous emails

• Adaptability: RL-attention layer improved long-term performance by learning from feedback

• Lightweight enough for real-time or edge-based use

???? Key Contributions

1. Hybrid Multi-Stage Architecture: Merges CNN + BiLSTM + RL in one model

2. RL-Based Adaptive Attention: More flexible than fixed or learned attention

3. Reward-Based Feature Weighting: Model refocuses based on classification feedback

4. Cross-Dataset Evaluation: Ensures robustness across spam types and sources

???? Research Gaps Addressed

• Static spam models with no adaptability

• Lack of reinforcement learning use in spam detection

• Poor generalization and explainability

• Absence of lightweight, real-time, or online learning approaches

???? Motivation

Modern spam emails mimic real human language and change tactics quickly. Current models:

• Struggle with real-time adaptability

• Lack semantic awareness

• Can’t evolve with new spam trends

This project aims to develop a flexible, explainable, and intelligent spam filter that adapts over time, works on low-resource devices, and can be improved or extended by developers.

Conclusion

Email spam is a major and increasing threat to digital trust, user productivity, and communication security, not only a daily irritability. Scholars have addressed it over years with everything from robust machine learning algorithms to rule-based filters. But spam is always changing, becoming more clever and flexible. Our detecting systems must thus also change. We presented in this work a hybrid deep learning model combining Reinforcement Learning, CNN, and BiLSTM strengths. Every component of the model is important: CNNs identify repeating spammy patterns, BiLSTMs grasp the larger background of a message, and the RL component lets the model dynamically change its attention using feedback. We evaluated this architecture on several datasets-SpamAssassin, Enron, and a custom hybrid dataset among others. The model exceeded many strong baselines including advanced neural networks like HAN, Naive Bayes, and even SVMs. Especially, it attained 98.1% accuracy and greatly lowered false positives, a common weak point of many spam filters. The adaptive learning capacity of the model is the true novelty here, not only performance. Reinforcement learning helps the system learn not once but rather how to improve itself depending on what works and what doesn\'t. That allows self-evolving email filters which improve with increasing usage to open doors. Still, we have admitted a few constraints: the computational cost of deep layers and the need of multilingual support. We have also discussed future directions to address those including online learning, TinyML deployment, and transformer-based attention. This work is a step toward smarter spam detection: systems that not only identify but also grow, learn, and adapt alongside the threats they are trying to stop.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Ankita ., Dr. Amandeep , Pawan . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.