Detecting spam from metafeatures of an email message. As a part of detecting spam, the email message is accessed and a distribution of numerical values is accorded to a set of features of the email message. It is determined whether the distribution of numerical values accorded the set of features of the email message is consistent with that of spam. Access is provided to the determination of whether the email message has a distribution of numerical values accorded the set of features that is consistent with that of spam.