My Spam analysis for June 22 - 28, 2009
This is the latest entry in my weekly series about classifications of spam, according to my custom filter rules used by MailWasher Pro. The categories are shown on the "Statistics" page > "Junk Mail," as a pie chart, based on my custom filters and blacklist. The amount of email flagged as spam is shown on the "Summary" page of Statistics.
The volume of spam coming to my various honeypots and user accounts has increased slightly this week. This indicates to me that some of the Botnets that lost their Control and Command servers following the forced shutdown of colocation host Pricewert have found other server hosts that allow illegal activities. Thus, sleeping zombie bots are awakening and spamming again.
The classifications of spam in my analysis can help you adjust your email filters according to what is most common, on a weekly basis. Most of the spam this week was for various fake pharmacies, which sell illicit and counterfeit pharmaceuticals like Viagra, weight loss scams and phishing scams.
See my extended comments for this week's breakdown of spam by category, for June 22 - 28, 2009 and the latest additions to my custom MailWasher Pro filters
MailWasher Pro spam category breakdown for June 22 - 28, 2009. Spam amounted to 13% of my incoming email this week. This represents a 5% increase from last week.
Pills: | 21.43% |
---|---|
Known Spam Domains: | 17.86% |
Male Enhancement Patches, etc: | 14.29% |
Phishing Scams (bank or credit card): | 10.71% |
Weight Loss Scams (e.g. Acai Berry) | 10.71% |
Canadian Pharmacy spam: | 7.14% |
Misc. Pharmaceutical spam: | 3.57% |
Counterfeit Watches: | 3.57% |
Viagra or Cialis Spam: | 3.57% |
Known Spam Subjects #3: | 3.57% |
"Other filters": (See my MWP Filters page) | 3.57% |
The latest weekly additions to my custom MailWasher Pro filters include updates to the Known Spam (in Body or From) and splitting it into two separate filters, Known Spam Domains, Known Spam Subjects #3, Male Enhancement [S], Viagra.com, Fake MSN Newsletters (Canadian Pharmacy), Canadian Pharmacy, Phishing and Weight Loss spam filters. Most of the known spam domains, Known Spam Subjects and Known Spam From/Body emails lead to bogus male enhancement solutions, like the fake Canadian Pharmacy sites, now hosted on Chinese domains and servers.
MailWasher Pro intercepts POP3 and IMAP email before you download it to your desktop email client (e.g: Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail) and scans it for threats or spam content, then either manually or automatically deletes any messages matching your pre-determined criteria and custom filters. It is my primary line of defense against incoming spam, scams, phishing and exploit attacks. If you are not already using this fine anti-spam tool I invite to to read about it on my MailWasher Pro web page. You can download the latest version and try it for free for a month. Registration is only required once, for the life of the program.
To protect your computer from web pages rigged with exploit codes, malware in email attachments, dangerous links to hostile web pages, JavaScript redirects, Phishing scams, or router DNS attack codes, I recommend Trend Micro Internet Security. It has strong realtime monitoring modules that stop rootkits and spam Trojans from installing themselves into your operating system. Also known as PC-cillin, it is very frequently updated as new and altered malware definitions become available and it checks for web based threats and new malware definitions by searching secure online servers owned by Trend Micro. This is referred to as "in-the-cloud" security.
All of the spam and scams targeting my accounts were either automatically deleted by my custom MailWasher Pro spam filters, or if they made it through, was reported to SpamCop, of which I am a reporting member, and manually deleted. MailWasher Pro is able to forward messages marked as spam to SpamCop, which then sends a confirmation email to you, containing a link. You must click on the enclosed reporting link and open it in your browser, then manually submit your report. This is how SpamCop wants it done.
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