My Spam analysis for 2nd week of September 2007
This article is about current email spam categories and percentages, based on rule sets created for and reported by the anti spam tool - MailWasher Pro.
I use MailWasher Pro to screen all of my various incoming POP email accounts, and for which I write my own custom spam filter rules. I give each rule a unique name so I can track the different types of spam I am deleting and reporting. The program has an interesting incoming email statistics window, that includes a pie chart breakdown of the various types of spam that are recognized and dealt with by the software. I thought I would start sharing my spam pie chart results with you all. This is the first installment, which I will try to update during, or at the end of the week. I'll post a new report each week, running from Monday through Sunday.
My analysis of this week's spam shows that various pharmaceuticals, including illicit prescription drugs, male and female enhancement pills and weight loss capsules lead the pack, totally a whopping 72.29% of all incoming spam. Most, but not all, are sent from Korea, Turkey and Poland, and all of them have links to Chinese web hosts who are friends, or partners in crime with the spammers. The senders are usually BotNetted computers with spam relays. Noticeably absent this week was the Pump-And-Dump stocks scammer.
My current statistics show that spam is 60% of all my incoming email, for the week of September 10 through 16, 2007. This is a big increase from the week before, which topped out at 47% These numbers may change by Sunday night and I will update this report to show the final figures
MailWasher Pro spam category breakdown for Sept 10 through 16, 2007.
| Pharmaceutical spam: | 29.19% |
|---|---|
| Male enhancement spam: | 19.8% |
| RX Spam: | 18.46% |
| Counterfeit Watches spam: | 7.72% |
| Casino spam: | 5.37% |
| Numeric IP scams: | 3.69% |
| Pirated software spam: | 3.69% |
| Pump & dump stocks: | 0% |
| Breast enlargement: | 2.01% |
| Weight loss pills: | 2.68% |
| Free NFL Tracker Trojan: | 1.00% |
| Other filters: | 3.70% |
| DNS Blacklists: | 2.35% |
| Bayesian learning filter: | 0.34% |
These spam categories and their relative percentages will probably shift a bit each week, as the BotMasters send new spam scripts to the zombie computers under their control. I will try to keep the percentages updated and merge miscellaneous categories as I am able to identify what they were spamvertising.
If you are reading this and wondering what you can do to reduce the huge volumes of spam emails that must be overwhelming your POP client inboxes, I recommend MailWasher Pro (with my downloadable custom filters) as a front-end screener to your POP email program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Microsoft Mail, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc).
Regarding my custom MailWasher Pro spam filters; due to my continuing work of refining these filter rules, their accuracy has increased to the point that only a tad over 1% of the spam detections flew under my radar and was classified as DNS Blacklists, for this reporting period. All other spam was classified and dealt with by my filters.
Get Norton 360 Version 4.0 - All-In-One Security.
If you have a non-current version of a Symantec security program and wish to renew your definition updates subscription, or upgrade to a new version at a discount, go to the Norton Product Upgrades & Renewals page.
Wiz's Blog is written by Bob "Wiz" Feinberg, an experienced freelance computer consultant, troubleshooter and webmaster. Wiz's specialty is in computer and website security. 