Spam analysis by category, for week of Sept 26 - Oct 2, 2011
Another week has gone by and spam levels have remained fairly static, at the same level (just under 40%) as the previous week. Most spam this week was promoting Russian and Ukrainian domains, pushing counterfeit drugs, pirated software, replica ripoff watches and dating scams.
Thankfully, there was a big decline in the number of scam emails containing malware in attachments, or at the end of hyperlinks. I did see a lot more spam messages for pirated software, all hosted on Ukrainian domains, ending with .com.ua. Also on those domains were male enhancement scams, weight loss, and someone named Elina who is looking for a man, but has an email address beginning with Maria.
Not to be left out, there were several Nigerian 419 scams and lots of junk mail for fake Cialis and Viagra. What few ACH Transaction Canceled scams I saw ended about mid-week. I have blogged about these threats numerous times since late August 2011. Search this blog for details about the ACH and FDIC scams leading to malware exploits and botnets.
The following are a list of categories of spam received this week, ranked by percentage, highest first.
I compile my spam statistics from my spam screening program MailWasher Pro, which I use to filter out spam, malware attachments and dangerous links, before downloading any messages to Windows Live Mail, which is my desktop email client.
Spam Statistics for September 26 through October 2, 2011 (compiled at about Midnight, with percentages of spam by category of filter.
My Custom Blacklist: 25.28%
Male Enhancement: 13.48%
Ukrainian Spam Domains (.com.us): 10.11%
Viagra Spam: 8.99%
Pharmaceutical Spam: 8.43%
Cialis (counterfeit): 7.30%
Counterfeit Watches: 7.30%
Miscellaneous filters: 5.62%
Weight Loss scams (HCG):5.06%
Pills Spam: 2.93%
Fake diplomas: 1.69%
Email Addresses for Sale (Spammer to Spammer): 1.69%
DNS Blacklisted Email Servers: 1.12%
Updates to my Custom MailWasher Filters:
Courier Scam #2 (UPS)
New Filter: .com.ua (Ukrainian) spam domain
New Blacklist entries:
None this week
Note: I write and publish custom spam filters for both the old and new versions of MailWasher Pro.
I use and recommend MailWasher Pro (2011) to screen my incoming POP3 email for spam, scams and virus threats, before downloading anything to my Windows Live Mail email client.
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