Smart Mail Shield: A Spam Detection System Using Python

Abstract

The widespread use of digital communication platforms has significantly increased the volume of unsolicited and malicious emails. Spam and phishing emails pose serious cybersecurity threats, including identity theft, financial fraud, and unauthorized access to sensitive information. Conventional email filtering techniques often depend on simple keyword-based rules, which are insufficient for identifying sophisticated and constantly evolving phishing strategies.This study presents Smart Mail Shield, an intelligent spam and phishing detection system developed using Python. The proposed solution combines multiple analytical approaches, including heuristic text evaluation, malicious URL identification, domain authenticity verification, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-based image analysis. Unlike traditional filtering systems that focus mainly on textual content, the proposed system can also process image-based inputs to detect phishing attempts hidden within embedded images.The system extracts relevant indicators such as suspicious keywords, harmful links, and irregular domain structures to compute a risk score for the analyzed content. A user-friendly web interface built using the Flask framework enables users to submit email text or upload images for automated security assessment. Based on the computed risk score, the system categorizes the input into three levels: Safe, Suspicious, or Phishing.

DOI: https://doi-ds.org/doilink/04.2026-41883239