My Spam analysis & filter updates for the week of Aug 1 - 7, 2011
This week finally gave me some measurable decline in the amount of spam hitting my inbox. The percentage of spam is down 6% from the previous week and the actual volume is down by even more. This is a reflection of the decline in revenues from spamvertised products and in the recent closure of several spam affiliate payment processors.
As for the top categories of spam, Male Enhancement took first place, followed by counterfeit watches, then fake Viagra, Cialis, weight loss drops, and other scams. There are still a considerable number of bogus diploma spams coming in, so some people must be stupid enough to purchase these worthless documents.
I see a repetitive pattern in certain types of spam, mostly for fake diplomas. The subjects are "RE: Hello" - "RE:Re:Hello" - "RE: RE:News" and similar. My Diploma and other existing filters pick them off based on the body text, with zero mistakes.
This past 7 days, spam for various types of unsolicited commercial email (UCE) amounted to 21% of my incoming email. This is according to MailWasher Pro, which I use to screen incoming email before downloading it to my desktop email program (Windows Live Mail). I report any spam messages that make it through my auto-delete filters to SpamCop.
Here are some statistics regarding the spam received and categorized, from Aug 1 - 7, 2011. These classifications are based upon my own custom MailWasher spam filters. Most of this spam is automatically deleted by MailWasher Pro and my custom filters. The statistics are obtained from the program's logs.
Statistics Overview
Percentage classified as spam: 21%; -6% from last week
Number of messages classified as spam: 85
Number classified by my custom spam filters: 75
Number and percentage of spam according to my custom blacklist: 3
Number classified as spam by the Bayesian Learning filter: 0
Number classified as spam according to DNS Blocklists (SpamCop, Spamhaus, etc): 1
Number of spam messages seen, reported to SpamCop & manually deleted: 13
The actual percentages of spam by category follow below.
The order of spam categories, according to the highest percentages, is as follows:
Male Enhancement scams: 26.58%
Counterfeit Watches: 11.39% (over double from last week!)
Fake Viagra: 8.86% (down 60%)
Fake Cialis: 7.59%
Weight Loss Scams (e.g. HCG): 7.59%
Known Spam Domains: 7.59%
Diploma Spam: 6.33% (down 1/3)
.RU (Russian) Domain Link: 5.06%
My Custom Blacklist: 3.80%
Lottery Scam: 2.53%
Non-English Language spam (apparently, Spanish and French): 2.53%
DNS Blacklists (SpamCop, Spamhaus, etc): 1.27%
Other Filters (with small individual percentages): 8.86%
This week I made 6 updates and/or additions to my custom filters:
Cialis filter re-enabled and edited,
Drugstore with spaced words,
Known Spam Domains,
Male Enhancement [S],
Split ".BR, .CN, .RU, .UA" filter into these 2 new filters:
.BR & .CN Domain Link,
and, .RU & .UA Domain Link
I made 1 addition to my custom Blacklist this week:
[email protected] (pump and dump stock scam)
There was one false positives last week, resulting in the removal of just one letter, from the Male Enhancement filter. All other filters behaved as intended, or as updated. My filters are published in both the old and new MailWasher Pro formats. One type is for the latest 2011 series, in xml format, and two are for the previous series 6.x. One of those filters is set for manual deletions and the other for automatic deletions. You can read all about MailWasher Pro and the filters I write for it, on my MailWasher Pro Custom Filters page.
If you are having trouble caused by excess volumes of spam email, and are not using an effective filter, why not try out MailWasher Pro? Not only does it detect and block spam, but can also protect your PC from downloading harmful viruses, or other known threats.
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