My Spam analysis & filter updates for the week of June 26 - July 3, 2011
Spam levels are continuing to decline, at least in my email accounts. This time last year, my percentage of spam email was 56%. This week, this year, it measured just 26%. That is a 54% decline in 12 months. The spam detected and deleted by MailWasher Pro was mostly for bogus male enhancement pills, which led by a 2:1 margin over other types of pharmaceutical and weight loss scams. Counterfeit watches and Nigerian lottery scams had measurable percentages.
I managed to trace several spam domains with the Russian .RU and some .COM TLD's to Romanian web hosts. Additionally, the SpyEye/Zeus Trojan Tracker, at Abuse.ch has traced down several SpyEye command and control servers to a Romanian hosting company. From Count Dracula to the Zeus and SpyEye Trojans, to fake pharmaceuticals and male enhancement scams, the Romanians have it all covered, with help from Russian Botmasters and master spammers. It is Russian and Romanian spammers who are paying to register and host hundreds of throwaway domain names, used in bot-sent spam blasts, promoting all manner of fake and illicit pharmaceuticals and herbals and exploits.
There was a measureable uptick in the amount of email containing direct links to exploit websites. My "Exploit Link" filter detected and deleted them all (see info on my custom MailWasher Pro filters, further down). Most led to the Zeus or SpyEye bank credential stealing Trojans.
Despite the fact that the volume and percentage of spam is declining right now, the threats contained in what is being sent are becoming more dangerous all the time. More and more spam is being sent after recipients identities are researched by spammers, who buy stolen IDs after break-ins of big company member databases. Others use password breakers to steal weak login credentials to free email systems, then send out spam targeting the entire contact list of the people who own those compromised email accounts. This happens constantly to Hotmail users.
You may have already received spam and scams targeting you by your personal or nickname. Therefore, effective email protection is required to protect your computers, your money and your data. MailWasher Pro is the program I use to detect and delete spam and email-borne security threats. My spam statistics are obtained from the program, showing how effective it is as a spam fighting tool.
This past 7 days, spam for various types of garbage amounted to 26% 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 June 26 - July 3, 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: 26%; -1% from last week
Number of messages classified as spam: 114
Number classified by my custom spam filters: 104
Number and percentage of spam according to my custom blacklist: 6
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: 11
The order of spam categories, according to the highest percentages, is as follows:
Male Enhancement scams: 32.43%
Pharmaceuticals: 14.41%
Fake Viagra and Cialis: 11.71%
Counterfeit Watches: 9.91%
Weight Loss Scams (HCG): 7.21%
Other Filters (with small individual percentages): 6.31%
My Blacklist: 5.41%
.BR, .CN, .RU, UA Spam Domain Links: 3.60%
Known Spam Domains: 2.70%
Exploit Link: 1.80%
PDF Attachments scams: 1.80%
Lottery Scams: 1.80%
DNS Blacklisted Servers: 0.90%
This week I made 3 updates and/or additions to my custom filters:
.BR .CN .RU .UA Domain Link,
Exploit Link,
URL Shortener (Spam) Link
Work At Home Scam
I made 0 addition to my custom Blacklist this week:
There were no false positives last week. All filters behaved as intended. Note, that I now publish three types of spam filters for MailWasher Pro. 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? It sure works for me!
If you like this article please share it.
The content on this blog may be reprinted provided you do not modify the content and that you give credit to Wizcrafts and provide a link back to the blog home page, or individual blog articles you wish to reprint. Commercial use, or derivative work requires written permission from the author.