My Spam analysis for May 19 - 25, 2008
After taking a few weeks off from reporting my spam categories I thought I would resume the exercise today. This is the latest entry in a series about classifications of spam, according to my custom filter rules used by the anti-spam tool, MailWasher Pro.
In the beginning of this series I was using MailWasher Pro filters exclusively, to detect and delete incoming spam email. Since then I have instituted email spam filters on my website's mail server, which has greatly reduced the amount of spam I see at all. The balance that does get through is identified and either flagged as spam, or instantly deleted, by my POP3 mail anti-spam tool; MailWasher Pro. MailWasher Pro identifies what is spam by a combination of methods, including the use of custom written personal spam filter rules. I have created a large assortment of spam filters which "plug-in" to MailWasher Pro, to flag or delete known spam. You can read about them, or download and use them in your own registered copy of MailWasher Pro.
The percentages for various categories of spam listed below are taken from my MailWasher Pro "Statistics" page. I am no longer stating the overall percentage of spam to good email, due to the huge effect my cPanel mail server filters on reducing the overall volume of junk mail. What does get through my server filters is still representative of what types of spam others are seeing and the same categories occupy the top positions for me as they do for you.
The category "Other Filters" combines several of my custom filters which did not receive enough spam to rate a measurable percentage, thus were all grouped into the one category.
MailWasher Pro spam category breakdown for May 19 through 25, 2008.
| Other filters: (See my MWP Filters page) | 22.09% |
|---|---|
| Nigerian 419 Scams: | 20.93% |
| Male enhancement spam (subject and body): | 15.11% |
| Pharmaceutical spam (inc. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra & misc. pills): | 10.47% |
| Counterfeit Watches: | 9.30% |
| Blacklisted (by pattern matching): | 8.14% (Mostly Nigerian 419 scams) |
| Counterfeit clothing and shoes: | 5.81% |
| HTML Tricks: | 3.49% |
| Casino Spam: | 3.49% |
| Bayesian learning filter: | 1.16% |
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 an incoming email screener for your POP email program (Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft Mail, Eudora, Mozilla and other stand-alone email programs).
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