My Spam analysis for March 2 - 8, 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 is still way down from last fall, thanks to the efforts of security companies, who have tirelessly pursued the server colocation facilities used by spammers to command and control spam-sending Botnets and then shut them down or get spam accounts terminated. Those spammers are rebuilding or replacing their Botnets as I type this, so let's not become complacent. In fact, my spam count has been slowly increasing since the third week of January, 2009.
If you use MailWasher Pro you can enable the Blacklist function and add some pattern matching blacklist filters to automatically delete spam messages containing a forged From address matching either of these Regular Expressions: lin+met@+.de and kef+diz@+, in MailWasher Pro. These two blacklist rules caught over 22% of this week's spam. The interesting fact about those two rules is that the same forged domain name prefix is used on both sides of the @ symbol. So, if you see an incoming email with a sender listed as kefsomedomaindiz@somedomain.com it will match that rule.
MailWasher Pro spam category breakdown for March 2 - 8, 2009. Spam amounted to 12% of my incoming email this week. This represents a 6% decrease from last week.
Blacklisted Domains/Senders: (by pattern matching wildcard rules like: lin+met@+.de and kef+diz@+) | 25.00% |
---|---|
Fake "Canadian Pharmacy" spam (fake Viagra, Cialis, etc): | 18.75% |
Dating spam: | 18.75% |
Hidden ISO or ASCII Subject spam: | 12.50% |
Nigerian 419 Scams: | 6.25% |
Phony Bounce messages: | 6.25% |
Known Spam Domains: | 6.25% |
Blocked Countries, RIPE, LACNIC, APNIC: | 6.25% |
If you are reading this and wondering what you can do to reduce the sometimes 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/Windows Live Mail, Eudora, Mozilla and other stand-alone email programs).
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. I never buy anything that is Spamvertised and recommend you don't either! Remember, almost all spam is now sent from compromised home or business PCs, zombies in various Botnets, all of which are controlled by criminals. If you purchase anything advertised in spam messages, you have given your credit or debit card information to the criminals behind that enterprise. If you are really lucky you will only be charged for the fake items you purchased, but, if not, you might find your credit limit used up, or your bank account emptied (for debit card transactions), by cyber criminals.
Also, unsubscribing through links in botnet-sent spam messages is futile, as you never opted-in, in the first place; your email address was captured by an email harvester on an infected computer belonging to somebody you corresponded with. Instead of receiving less spam as one might expect (by unsubscribing), all it does is confirm that your email address is active and you will see even more spam than before.
Another common way your email address may get harvested by spammers is if it appears in a large C.C. (Carbon Copy) list on a computer that gets Botnetted. Many people engage in forwarding messages among all their friends. Each time they forward chain letters their address gets added to the growing list of recipients (called Carbon Copy, or CC). If just one recipient of that message has an email harvesting malware infection, all of the email addresses listed in that message will be sent home to the spammer behind that spam run.
Smart folks who want to forward or send a message to multiple recipients use B.C.C. instead of C.C. Using B.C.C. hides all of the recipients from displaying. The To field will just show "Undisclosed Recipients" in a message sent using B.C.C. This is safest for you and your friends or mailing list. All email clients have a means of displaying a B.C.C. field.
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