It seems that in our ever-technical society we increasingly use a technical term to describe something, except that term doesn’t really mean much except as a way for engineers to spot other technical types in a crowd or in a conversation. This report reviews exactly such a circumstance in email processing markets.
[[False-positive]] is a statistical term (also known as Type I or alpha error) to explain those circumstances when a test on the subject generates one of two inappropriate results – when the test says yes the subject is infected when in fact they are not. (The other inappropriate result, the beta-error or Type II error is that the test fails, but the subject is infected).
Technical terms aside, in email security markets, the industry uses false-positive to describe those circumstances when the filtering software identifies a good email as junk.
This report uses the results of a study of 204 business user and seeks to begin the industry transition to TRAPPED EMAIL as a more appropriate synonym for false-positive email.
