My Spam analysis & filter updates for the week of July 10-17, 2011
This week my spam percentage has increased slightly, to 29%, up 2% from last week. The subjects are exactly the same as they have been for the last year. Spammers are still pushing bogus male enhancement herbals, like the MaxGentleman, Chinese replica watches, counterfeit Cialis and Viagra, various illicit prescription pharmaceuticals, HCG weight loss scams, lottery and work at home scams.
Pharmaceutical spammers are still hosting their websites in Romania and are still using mostly .RU domains (Russian). All are advertising that they sell prescription drugs without the required prescription. Some are still falsely claiming to be "non-USA licensed pharmacies" - of which there is no such thing. The drugs they sell are counterfeit and both dangerous and unlawful to import into the USA or Canada.
This past 7 days, spam for various types of garbage amounted to 29% 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 July 10-17, 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: 29%; +2% from last week
Number of messages classified as spam: 117
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: 19
The order of spam categories, according to the highest percentages, is as follows:
Male Enhancement scams: 28.83%
Counterfeit Watches: 17.12%
Other Filters (with small individual percentages): 9.91%
Pharmaceuticals (unlawful to import into the USA): 9.01%
Fake Viagra and Cialis: 9.01%
Weight Loss Scams (e.g. HCG): 5.41%
My Custom Blacklist: 5.41%
Lottery Scams: 3.60%
Known Spam Domains: 2.70%
Work at Home Scams: 2.70%
.BR, .CN, .RU, .UA spam domain links: 2.70%
URL Shortener Spam Link: 2.70%
.DNS Blacklisted Servers (e.g. SpamCop, Spamhaus): 0.90%
This week I made 4 updates and/or additions to my custom filters:
Diploma Spam (added area code 832),
Known Spam Domains (added perfectdeliveries.com),
Unlicensed Prescription Drugs (added Avandia),
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!
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