Wiz's spam analysis for the week ending Feb 26, 2012
For the fourth week in a row my percentage of spam has remained around the 25% mark. This percentage is almost identical to the same period last year. Further, my total amount of email received was up about 12% from last week, as was the amount of spam.
This week, the highest percentage of spam this week, like last week, was for fake pharmacies. Closely following was spam for fake casinos, then male enhancement scams, with replica watches in 4th place. The category of malware fraud was much lower and covered four types of scams: the BBB, NACHA, ACH and JavaScript redirects to exploit kits in attached .htm files in phony Certified Account membership termination warnings.
I was kept busy updating my spam filters for MailWasher Pro, which is the program I use to intercept spam before I download it to my Windows Live Mail email client.
The following is my analysis of spam for the week of February 20 - 26, 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: 444 (12% more than last week)
Good mail: 332 (295 last week)
Classified as spam: 112 (100 last week)
Percentage rated spam: ~25%
Breakdown by category of spam
Fake (Canadian) pharmacies: 20.5% (20% last week)
Casino: 18.7% (18% last week)
Male Enhancement: 11.6% (4% last week)
Watches: 8.9% (12% last week)
URL Shortener spam links: 6.25% (2% last week)
Marked as Spam by MailWasher Pro: 5.3%
Diploma scams: 5.3%
Pirated software (.com.ua domains): 4.5% (8% last week)
Weight Loss: 2.7% (2% last week)
ACH, BBB, or NACHA malware links: 2.7% (15% last week)
Counterfeit goods: 1.8%
Other miscellaneous types of spam ~ 1% each: 11.75% (7% last week)
I made the following additions or updates to my custom MailWasher spam filters
Casino Spam (#1 for v 6.5.4),
Diploma Spam (plain body and RegExp body),
Known Spam [From],
Known Spam Subjects #4,
Male Enhancement [S],
URL Shortener Link,
Work At Home Scam #2
The following (single or wildcard) email addresses were added to my MailWasher Blacklist:
[email protected]
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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