Dear Apache Development Team, My name is Eli Ecanow and I am carrying out the project under the supervision of the FBI LA citizens academy. I am an undergraduate student studying computer science at the University of Michigan and am working alongside 4 undergraduate students studying Computer Science at MIT. The Apache Project I am interested in is SpamAssassin. My team and I are working to create an app which allows users to enter emails they receive which appear to be spam or phishing scams. We started the project approximately a month ago. We expect to be done with the project by the end of the month of July. We have made some immense progress but we are having trouble with the language processing piece of the code which helps give a rating for each fraudulent email that is passed through the system based on language analysis. We are impressed by project SpamAssassin and specifically the language processing piece of your code because that is the only part we are struggling with. If there is a mentor of Apache staff that could help us better navigate that part of the code in the API, we would greatly appreciate it. If this project is successfully completed it will help identify and prevent many phishing scams for the future and better educate citizens in the United States on how to better identify phishing scams and not fall victim to them. We are a non-profit organization, and everyone working on the project is doing it pro-bono. While this is not directly contributing to an Apache project, I know that Apache already does outstanding work with tracking, identifying, and recording different cyber scams. This project will help contribute to Apache’s general goal to be civically engaged and help protect citizens across the country from malicious cyber crimes. I work around 35-40 hours a week on the project along with my partners. If we could get some guidance from one of your mentors, I am confident our app will be finished by our expected end date and do great work. We would be willing to officially partner with Apache if you would be willing to lend us some guidance. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Best, Eli Ecanow
