My Spam analysis & filter updates for the week of Dec 13 - 19. 2010
With Christmas arriving this coming weekend, spammers have ramped up their efforts into overdrive, in order to divert some of your hard earned dollars into their purloined pockets. Don't be fooled by their email pitches. Spam offers are fraudulent, dealing in fake goods and payment ripoffs.
This week, spammers are mostly promoting fake Viagra, counterfeit watches, bogus male enlargement herbs and pills, illegal to import prescription drugs, and Russian dating scams.
This past 7 days, spam for various types of garbage amounted to 47% 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 often see the same spam message sent to several of my accounts at the same time. 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 December 13 - 19, 2010. These classifications are based upon my own custom MailWasher spam filters.
Percentage classified as spam: 47%; down 4% from last week Number of messages classified as spam: 322 Number classified by my custom spam filters: 242 Number and percentage of spam according to my custom blacklist: 13 Number classified as spam according to DNS Blocklists (SpamCop, Spamhaus, etc): 2 Number of spam messages seen, reported to SpamCop & manually deleted: 13The order of spam according to the highest percentages, is as follows:
Fake Viagra and Cialis: 40.86% Counterfeit (Rolex, etc) Watches: 19.84% Male Enhancement scams: 10.51% Dating (Russian Bride scams): 6.61% Pharmaceuticals and fake prescription drugs: 6.23% Blacklisted sender names and domains: 5.06% Known Spam Domains in links (usually Russian: .RU): 4.67% Numeric IP hostile link (hijacked PCs): 1.95% Other miscellaneous filters (small percentages each): 1.95% Charset=iso-8859-2 (Latvia, etc): 0.78% Nigerian Lottery Scam: 0.78% DNS Blacklisted Servers: 0.78%
I made 1 additions/updates to my custom filters:
Known Spam [From]
I made 1 change to my custom Blacklist:
*easy-e-card*@+
Take my advice and never reply to spam email, just delete it. Don't bother trying to unsubscribe from spam mail lists. Nobody ever gets de-listed; you will only confirm that your email address is valid by using the bogus unsubscribe links. Think about it: if you never signed up to receive the (fake) goods advertised in a spam email, why should you have to unsubscribe? The unsubscribe links are not honored. However, people using them are added to databases of proven live accounts and their names are sold to other spammers.
Spammers are slimeball criminals and fraudsters, not legitimate business people. Never buy anything that is spamvertised. If you do, you will give your credit or debit card details to hardened criminals, in far away places. If you purchase illicit controlled drugs from abroad, they are subject to seizure by US Customs. It is against the law to import prescription drugs without a valid prescription issued by a physician who is validly licensed in the USA. And, if you actually receive Asian prescription pills ordered from a spam email link, the drugs may do nothing, or may harm you, or even kill you.
A word regarding knockoff watches: they are made in China, have no applicable warranty, cannot be returned if defective, are sold by criminal spammers, and are inferior to the real items they are copying. If you buy a counterfeit name brand watch, know that a fool and his money soon will part! Ditto for fake diplomas that are offered from time to time and all of the fake Viagra pills and enlargement scams that appear every day.
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