Spam percentage continues to decline in percentage & threat level
Since last Sunday night, Sept 18, my incoming percentage of spam email has dropped slightly, from 36% to 35%. This makes 4 weeks in a row of small, yet steady decreases in spam. Furthermore, the amount of malicious attachments has taken a drastic downturn from the previous few weeks.
With the welcome decline in the number of malware laden attachments, what is left is standard junk email for prescription drugs, illegal to import into the USA, sold without a prescription, from Russian and Ukrainian domains. Also there were many male enhancement (Max-Gentleman) and weight loss scams (pushing HCG pills), as well as the usual batch of fake Viagra and Cialis. Again, these are prescription drugs, and even though they're counterfeit, they are illegal to import into the USA from abroad. There were even a few spam emails selling fake diplomas and a bunch of Nigerian lottery and inheritance 419 scams.
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 19 through 25, 2011 (compiled at about Midnight)
Total email received: 440
Amount classified as spam: 155
Percentage of spam: 35%
Number matched by my custom filters: 140
Number caught by my Blacklist: 11
Number identified by DNS Blacklists: 4
Reported to SpamCop: 38
Individual categories of spam follow...
Percentages of spam by category of filter.
Pharmaceutical Spam: 21.80% (way up)
Male Enhancement: 21.80% (up)
.RU, .RO, or .UA links: 9.77% (up)
My Custom Blacklist: 8.27% (down)
Counterfeit Watches: 8.27% (down)
Miscellaneous filters: 5.26% (down)
Nigerian 419 Scams: 5.26%
Weight Loss scams (HCG):4.51% (way down)
Cialis (counterfeit): 4.51% (way down)
Diploma Scams: 4.51% (way up)
DNS Blacklisted Email Servers: 3.01% (up)
Lottery Scams: 1.50% (new this week)
Email Addresses For Sale (old Spammers selling to wannabe Spammers): 1.50%
Updates to my Custom MailWasher Filters:
Pharmaceuticals [S],
Unlicensed Prescription Drugs
New Blacklist entries:
*@fdic.gov (apply this blacklist wildcard rule to block current FDIC scams)
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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