My Spam analysis for June 8 - 14, 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.
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam (from the old Monty Python routine)! The volume of spam coming to my various honeypots and user accounts has held steady this week, still at a relatively low volume (some spammers do prune honeypot accounts from their lists). Some of this is also attributable to the forced closure of Pricewert, a spam-friendly hosting company, where Botnet command and control servers and malware hosting was carried out by its customers, with no action taken by the company to halt those activities.
The classifications of spam in my analysis can help you adjust your email filters according to what is most common, on a weekly basis. Much of the spam this week was for the fake pharmacies, which sell illicit and counterfeit pharmaceuticals, Nigerian 419 scams, fake Cialis and Viagra. Also, the volume of phishing scams targeting customers of various Australian banks and credit card holders remained in the running this week.
See my extended comments for this week's breakdown of spam by category, for June 8 - 14, 2009 and the latest additions to my custom MailWasher Pro filters
MailWasher Pro spam category breakdown for June 8 - 14, 2009. Spam amounted to 12% of my incoming email this week. This represents a 3% decrease from last week.
| Known Spam Domains: | 29.17% |
|---|---|
| Viagra or Cialis Spam: | 16.67% |
| "Other filters": (See my MWP Filters page) | 12.50% |
| Nigerian 419 Scams: | 8.33% |
| Phishing Scams (bank or credit card): | 8.33% |
| Male Enhancement Patches, etc: | 4.17% |
| Misc. Pharmaceutical spam (inc. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra & misc. pills & herbals): | 4.17% |
| Counterfeit Software: | 4.17% |
| Known Spam User Agents: | 4.17% |
| PayPal Phishing Scams: | 4.17% |
| Hidden ISO or ASCII Subject: | 4.17% |
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.
Trend Micro Internet Security products, for home and office users, use in-the-cloud malware definitions that are updated every day, all day, as soon as new or altered strains of viruses and other malware are detected in the wild and analyzed. By offloading the bulk of these ever changing virus definitions to cloud servers, the load on your computers is greatly reduced. All users of Trend security programs are instantly protected from hostile web pages laden with malware exploits and hostile email, by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network.
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