SPAM, in the a internet sense is the sending of a mass number of unsolicited message with the intent of forcing a message or advertisement upon a less than receptive audience. It is the digital equivalent of telemarketing while calling collect and it is estimated that SPAM costs the US companies more than $10 Billion in 2004. At Flanigan.net SPAM is an evil we must constantly be vigilant against. Left unchecked we would be unable to wade though the junk in our e-mail box to the real content. This page is dedicated to SPAM statistics for Flanigan.net. Below you will find details of my fight on spam and how successful I have been.

The Following are stats gathered from Flanigan.net representing the volume of SPAM messages received on our mail server. It is important to note that we are not an ISP, and only host e-mail accounts for family and friends. The volume of spam is staggering.

These Spam Stats where generated for Flanigan.net at Fri May 16 05:12:01 EDT 2008 .
Total E-mail Messages Received so far this month: 125,781.
Of those 125,781 messagss, 117,081 or 93.1 %, where SPAM.
Spam Caught at MX1: 16,483, MX2: 49,936, MX3: 50,662.

The remaining 8,700 messages where processed and delevered as HAM.

On the Spamassassin Socring Scale, the average HAM message had a score of -78.84.
On the Spamassassin Socring Scale, the average SPAM message had a score of 25.69.

Previous months stats, starting in March, 2006, are available here.

Basic spammers are stopped at the edge of the system through the use of DNSBL (DNS Black Hole Lists) which record known spammers or known open relays. I use three lists: ORDB, DSBL, and NJABL all of which are very good and meet my needs.
I keep track of the performance of each list, which you will find below along with links to the list website.
The following is the performance so far this month. These counts reset at the end of the month, and are available in the monthly spam logs above.

Primary MX: NS1 DSBL.ORG: 17,035 NJABL: 1,152 Total: 18,187

Secondary MX: NS2 DSBL.ORG: 5,998 NJABL: 96 Total: 6,094

Secondary MX: NS3 DSBL.ORG: 6,174 NJABL: 189 Total: 6,363

The following chart tracks long term performance of our DNS Black Lists. So far we are seeing an ever increases number of attempted spam blocked at the sendmail connect stage, which means the spam never actually makes it onto our system.

One of the more recent developments in Spam has been the introduction of Referrer Spam, or spamming aimed webservers in order to improve a particular websites listing on search engines. I will not go into detail here, but you can find more information about referrer spam from Wikipedia.
Below you will find the referrer spam stats for www.flanigan.net. So far they are basic, but here for reference. I may improve on them at a latter time.

Referrer Spam Stats for www.flanigan.net for May, 2008
A total of 1028 referrer spam hits where identified and removed.

In addition, the following chart provides historical trending for referrer spam, begining in May of 2006. The chart auto-updates at the start of each new month.

The following chart tracks Referrer Spam on a daily bases, for approximatly the current and previous month. The level of detail is greater, but the history is limited.

The following graph shows the longer term trending of spam volumes here at Flanigan.net.
This graph is not useful for the overall plotting of spam activity against us changes (improvements, new spam techniques) are reflected in the graph as often as real changes in spam activity. However, this is interesting to reflect the amount of spam which is being identified and discarded. Note that the HAM (good e-mail) is normally fairly consistent.

The increase in June and July was due to some configuration errors which identified "user-unknown" e-mail as spam.

This graph is automatically updated at 12:30am on the 1st of every month.



This following chart, also updated monthly, tracks monthly spam as a % of overall mail received @flanigan.net or our other domains. You will not that the % spam is historically over 75%.