Spam and email threat analysis for the week ending Nov 20, 2011
For the third week in a row my spam volume and percentage has dropped, this time by 3% from the previous week. Also, the number of malware bearing emails was way down from previous weeks, with just 9 messages with malware attachments arriving this week.
The top categories of spam last week were for Male Enhancement, weight loss tablets and pirated software (on Ukrainian .com.ua domains). The remainder were filled by spam for replica watches, Russian bride dating scams, some fake diploma spam and Money Mule job recruitment scams. Malware bearing email threats were fake alerts about canceled ACH transfers and payments, failed direct deposits, etc. They contained Trojans that silently steal your logon credentials to your online banks, then empty them of your savings.
The following are the categories of spam, by percentage, from November 14 through 20, 2011, as obtained from my anti-spam program: MailWasher Pro.
During the last week I received 390 email messages, to all of my accounts, which is exactly the same amount as last week. Of those, 119 were classified as spam by MailWasher Pro, which is 30% spam. My custom Blacklist auto-deleted 9 spam messages. My spam filters accounted for 110 and I reported 19 spams to SpamCop.
Here are the categories of spam as classified by my custom spam filters.
Male Enhancement: 17.65%
Weight Loss scams (HCG): 14.29%
Ukrainian Spam Domain Links (.com.ua) (pirated software): 11.76%
Other, miscellaneous categories: 9.24%
Russian Bride Dating Scams: 8.40%
Counterfeit Viagra: 8.40%
Blacklisted senders, from my own blacklist: 7.56%
Counterfeit Replica Watches: 5.88%
Counterfeit Cialis: 5.04%
Pharmaceuticals: 5.04%
URL Shortener spam links: 3.36%
Zip (malware!) Attachment: 3.36%
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.
Ukrainian spam domain links,
Replica Watches,
Work At Home Scam (#2 for version 6.x)
I made 1 addition to my custom blacklist (individual email addresses and wildcard Regular Expressions):
+@*nacha.+
That wildcard email entry into the blacklist blocks all of the current incarnations of ACH scams that use "nacha" in the email address.
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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