Wiz's spam analysis for the week ending Feb 12, 2012
For the second week in a row my percentage of email spam is at about one quarter of all incoming mail. My total volume of email increased by 70 messages, from last week, with those deleted as spam increasing by 25.
For the second week in a row spam for replica watches (ripoffs of name brands) led the pack, with over 23%. All of the websites promoting these fake watches were hosted on Russian domains and are part of a Russian spam affiliate program.
The second most prevalent category of spam this week was promoting male enhancement pills. Casino (fake) spam took third place. It was just a few weeks ago that casino spam was the top category.
Missing entirely this week was spam for Russian brides and work at home scams. Those categories were heavily represented just a few weeks ago.
Also, spam leading to the Zeus banking Trojan through scams spoofing the BBB, or ACH, or FDIC, or Intuit are way down this week. Many of the people running these scams are now under arrest, or have warrants for their arrest, or are under investigation by local authorities in their own countries (all Eastern Europeans, Ukrainians and Russians).
The following is my analysis of spam for the week of February 6 - 12, 2012.
These spam statistics are derived from MailWasher Pro, which is a POP3 email filtering program that runs on a Windows desktop. It intercepts all incoming email and analyzes it, based upon several factors, the most prominent of which are my own custom spam filters.
Overview
Total incoming email: 415
Good mail: 305
Classified as spam: 110
Percentage rated spam: ~26%
Breakdown by category of spam
Watches: 23.6% (30% last week)
Male Enhancement: 19% (4.7% last week)
Casino: 14.5% (7% last week)
Diplomas: 7.2% (3.5% last week)
Weight Loss: 7.2% (3.5% last week)
Marked as Spam: 4.5% (2.3% last week)
.com.ua or .ru spam domains: 4.5%
Known spam domains: 3.6%
ACH or BBB malware links: 2.7% (same as last week)
Cialis: 2.7% (7% last week)
Known spam [From]: 2.7% (4.7% last week)
Viagra spam: 1.8%
Other miscellaneous types of spam ~ 1% each: 6% (12.23% last week)
I made the following additions or updates to my custom MailWasher spam filters
ACH Fraud,
Casino Spam #1,
Casino Spam #2,
Known Spam [From],
Re: or Fw: spam,
Work At Home Scam #2
The following (single or wildcard) email addresses were added to my MailWasher Blacklist:
No additions this week
About MailWasher Pro
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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