Spam and email threat analysis for the week ending Oct 30, 2011
In case you didn't know it, spam levels have increased dramatically this week. For the first time in about a year, my own spam level has reached 60%. This is up 12% from last week. While the actual amount of spam has increased, the subjects and scams have not changed much. Only the percentages by category are changed this week.
For those who haven't read my spam reports before, I employ an email screening program named MailWasher Pro to act as a filter for known, or suspected spam, scams and virus threats. I obtain statistics at the end of each week, for each category of spam, based upon filters I write and publish (for other MailWasher Pro users).
The number of threats arriving in spam email was greatly reduced from the previous month. There were just a handful of ACH and Wire Transfer Rejected scams. They all contained links leading to Russian, Romanian, or Ukrainian malware servers. All spam for pirated software is still hosted on Ukrainian domains, ending in .COM.UA. Most of the rest of the spam this week was hosted on Russian .RU domains. This is especially true for the numerous Russian Bride online dating scams.
Let's look at my spam statistics for the week ending Oct 30, 2011, as obtained from my anti-spam program: MailWasher Pro.
During the last week I received about 460 email messages, to all of my accounts. Of those, 280 were classified as spam by MailWasher Pro. That is about 60%. My custom Blacklist did extremely well in blocking all manner of spam and scams sent from domains on my blacklist.
Here are the categories of spam as classified by my custom spam filters.
Blacklisted senders, from my own blacklist: 29.29%
Ukrainian Spam Domain Links: 19.29%
Counterfeit Watches: 15.36%
Russian Dating Scams: 8.93%
Male Enhancement: 8.57%
Fake Diplomas: 4.29%
Cialis: 4.29%
Weight Loss Pills (HCG): 2.86%
Russian Spam Domain Links (.RU):2.14%
Pharmaceuticals: 1.43%
DNS Blacklists: 1.43%
Pirated Software: 1.07%
URL Shortener Spam Links: 1.07%
The above stats were derived from MailWasher Pro and most were classified by anti-spam filters I write and publish. I frequently update these filters. The following updates were made to my spam filters this week.
Russian Bride Scam
I made no additions to my custom blacklist (wildcard expression):
I publish filters for both the old and new versions of MailWasher Pro. However, the new version allows for more lines of conditions than the previous ones. If you use a desktop application to send and receive POP3 email, MailWasher can act as a spam filter before you download email to your email client. You can learn more about the program, download a trial version, or purchase a subscription, at the MailWasher Pro website.
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