Spam volumes remain high, but are declining
For the second week in a row, I have seen a decline in the overall volume and percentage of spam email. While the percentage is still high, at 36%, it is down 3% from last week. Most spam for counterfeit drugs, fake diplomas, Nigerian 419 scams and replica watches is profit driven by the suckers who respond to spammers' come-ons. But, a large amount is still coming in containing malware in attachments.
The weekend of September 12 through 18 saw a temporary decline of a prolonged spam run for fake ACH failure notices, all containing the Zeus/Zbot Trojan, but it picked back up mid week. Added to the mix of hostile attachments were emails claiming to be invoices and changelogs. they also contain the Zbot banking Trojan and botnet installers.
I obtain my spam statistics form the anti-spam 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 11 through 18, 2011
Total email received: 426
Amount classified as spam: 155
Percentage of spam: 36%
Number matched by my custom filters: 129
Number caught by my Blacklist: 21
Number identified by DNS Blacklists: 4
Reported to SpamCop: 19
Individual categories of spam follow...
Percentages of spam by category of filter.
Male Enhancement: 15.58% (down)
My Custom Blacklist: 13.64% (up)
Counterfeit Watches: 11.69% (up)
Weight Loss scams (HCG):9.74% (up)
Cialis (counterfeit): 9.74% (up)
Pharmaceutical Spam: 7.79% (down)
Miscellaneous filters: 7.14% (up)
Zip Attachments (Zbot/Zeus Trojan): 6.49% (down)
.RU, .RO, or .UA links: 6.49% (down)
Software Spam (pirated "Whirl Wind Software," on Ukrainian domains): 5.19% (down)
DNS Blacklisted Email Servers: 2.60% (up)
Diploma Scams: 1.95% (up)
Loans: 1.95% (new this week)
Updates to my Custom MailWasher Filters:
ACH Fraud,
Webmail Phishing Scam
New Filter: Russian Pharmacy
New Blacklist entries:
No new addresses. But, the .DE (Germany), Russian and nacha.org wildcard blacklist entries have proved very effective in auto deleting a lot of spam this past week.
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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