Wiz's spam analysis for the week ending Feb 5, 2012
After several weeks of overall decline, my percentage of email spam has again decreased, this time by 4%, for the week ending February 5, 2012, to about 25% of my incoming email. My actual amount of email received, good and bad, was lower than the previous week, by about 54 messages. 85 messages were classified as spam, which is 43 less than the previous week.
The types of spam have drastically shifted over the past few weeks. Last week and several weeks before, Casino spam led the pack by a long shot (pun). These are scams asking you to download a suspicious executable to play their crappy games and lose your money and bank card details. Apparently, these scams are being shut down and what remains is small potatoes compared to two weeks ago.
The new leader in junk email is (...drum roll...) Fake/Replica Watches. These knockoffs are sold on Russian domains and websites hosted on compromised computers. The spam affiliates are about to learn that their primary spam portal for counterfeit goods is closing. Doh!
Interestingly, spam containing links to malware was way down, with just three email messages using URL shortener services to deliver payloads disguised as free tickets, vouchers and iPhones.
The following is my analysis of spam for the week of January 30, through February 5, 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 from January 30 through Feb 5: 345
Good mail: 260
Classified as spam: 85
Percentage rated spam: ~25%
Breakdown by category of spam
Watches: 30.6%
Cialis: 7%
Casino: 7%
Blacklisted (my blacklist): 4.7%
Known spam "From": 4.7%
Male Enhancement: 4.7%
Pharma and Pills: 4.7%
Diplomas: 3.5%
URL Shortener Link: 3.5%
Weight Loss: 3.5%
Work at home Scam: 3.5%
Marked as Spam: 2.3%
Russian Bride: 2.3%
Nigerian 419 scams: 2.3%
Accented letters (foreign language): 2.3%
MailWasher "Language" filter:: 1.17%
Other miscellaneous types of spam: 12.23%
I made the following additions or updates to my custom MailWasher spam filters
Diploma Spam [B regexp],
Nigerian 419 Scam #3,
Nigerian 419 Scam #6
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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