Gates 'World's Most-Spammed Man'

acehole writes "Bill Gates receives up to four million emails a day, and is probably the most spammed person in the world. But unlike ordinary users, he has an entire department to filter unsolicited " At least now I know why he never replies to my requests for an interview ;)

Why not release it?

Since he DOES have an entire department creating software to filter out spam, why doesn't he RELEASE said filters and help the rest of the world out? Hell, its MS... why not at least sell it and try to make that department profitable??

Re:Why not release it?

Of over 30 billion e-mails being sent daily, some experts estimate that over 40% is Spam.

Google informs me that 40% of 30 billion = 12 000 000 000

and (4 000 000 / 12 000 000 000) * 100 = 0.0333333333

That gives Bill Gates a measly 0.03% Market share of Spam. I think we should help Microsoft grow by forwarding all our unwanted spam to Bill.

Re:Why not release it?

Probably because it is based on something open-source like SpamAssassin.

Re:Why not release it?

Well, in a manner of speaking the human species is open-source.

Yeah, in the same manner of speaking that Microsoft Word is open source. Let's face it, raw DNA is not the preferred way to modify the human genome. Neither is a binary executable the preferred way to modify a word-processor.

It's just that reading the source (i.e. the DNA) is something we haven't quite mastered yet.

Ok, that's a possibility too. But I can't really see any plausible reason for nature to make it easy for us to decode DNA. It's meant for execution by cells, not for easy comprehension (or modification) by genetic engineers.

And just like open-source software the human being is constantly being developed upon, albeit so very slowly that we cannot see it for ourselves. But each new baby that's born (the nightlies, hahaha) is a little different than the previous generation. Sometimes this backfires on the whole community *cough*georgewbush*cough* but in general there's improvement.

Actually, there's no good reason to believe human evolution is for the better. Ever since humans discovered farming, we no longer need to be intelligent enough to outwit our prey, or strong enough to kill it, or fast enough to catch it, or having a good enough immune system to eat rotten food, or being able to care for our children in this environment for umpteen years, etc...

In fact, in modern society it's even worse. Due to the fact that the state will take care of you and your children even if you can't do it yourself, the only skill you need to create surviving offspring is to have low enough demands to get laid by someone (no matter how stupid, annoying, ugly, etc), and to be stupid enough not to wear condoms.

Humans have probably "devolved" ever since the neanderthals, and as the society gets "better", the individuals detoriate at an ever increasing rate.

An interesting side-note (just to be politically correct), is that those who advocate racial purity (e.g. nazis), seems to prefer those who have lived in modern society for the longest period of time. They probably should prefer bushmen instead.

Re:Why not release it?

Since he DOES have an entire department creating software to filter out spam, why doesn't he RELEASE said filters and help the rest of the world out?

In his case, I suspect the filters are human.

Re:Why not release it?

More likely, this was an off-the-cuff semi-joke from Ballmer that everyone here is reading way too closely. I very much doubt that there is in actuality either a "department" or "special technology" handling Gates' email. Ballmer is saying "Yes, we know this is a problem. Given the mail we get, we could hardly not know."

By the way, note that the top three stories in the Australian news are "Wallaby escapes police action", "Bat swoops to bite woman" and "Passengers save bus from plunge". Gotta love Australia!

Re:Why not release it?

Maybe they think Bill needs viagra or he wants to help some nigerian millionare to transfer some funds?

Re:Why not release it?

I think it's 46 days actually.
4e6 / 60 = 66.6e3 mins
66e3 mins / 60 = 1111hrs
1111hrs / 24 = 46 days.

Re:Why not release it?

In his case, I suspect the filters are human.

Or possibly Morlocks.

Re:Why not release it?

Nah... they're obviously Mentats.
They have a whole office chanting, "It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion."

It's not a question of spam

Undoubtedly Gates is just like thousands of other executives; he has assistants who read his email for him. An executive of a company as large and powerful as Microsoft hardly would have time to read and respond to the typical 300-500 emails one gets in a day, let alone the thousands or millions he gets from being famous. I feel sorry for the guy, in a way; he used to be a computer geek just like so many others and he's cut off from part of the internet just by virtue of his success.

It does sound like an excellent opportunity to leverage some of that computer brainpower they have and create some first class spam filtering technology. With a test base of 4 million spams a day they have all the sample data they will ever need.

Re:It's not a question of spam

I feel sorry for the guy, in a way; he used to be a computer geek just like so many others and he's cut off from part of the internet just by virtue of his success.

He'll have any number of different e-mail addresses for different purposes, inluding ones that only friends and family know - I'm sure he's not shut off from a part of the internet just because every idiot puts [e-mail] in forms when they don't want to give their own address.

Re:Why not release it?

He should get a GMail account and scrap the department.

I think I see the problem

At least now I know why he never replies to my requests for an interview ;)

Here's a tip:

When asking for an interview, do not also offer to enlarge his penis. Mox

Re:I think I see the problem

Tip? Penis? Reminds me of the good old leper joke.

What did the leper say to the prostitute?
You can keep the tip..

Re:I think I see the problem

Reminds me of the good old leper joke.

This is obviously some strange new meaning of the word 'good' that I wasn't previously aware of...

Email Required

I'm comforted to know that when I use [e-mail] when signing up for something stupid, or for those sites that require an email for download, he actually gets those emails.

Re:Email Required

it's [e-mail]

Re:Email Required

Ooops.. sounds like [e-mail] might get even more :)

Re:Email Required

anyone know Ballmer's?

developersdevelopersdevelopersdevelopers@microsoft .com

Re:Email Required

Back when I was still in school, a MS recruiter came and gave a talk to our ACM. His name was also Bill Gates. His email address was [e-mail], which caused all sorts of confusion. Apparently, he would get invitations to dinners and speaking engagements.

Only 4 million per day?

Hmmm, I would have thought more considering all the unpatched Windows boxes out there.

XP OEM CH33p!\@

I wonder if he gets spam about discounted copies of XP?

Or ... This is NOT a joke!

I wonder if he gets spam about discounted copies of XP?

I wonder if he gets any of those "Bill Gates will send you money" chain letters.

Well..

I can't say that it breaks my heart.. Maybe Bill should get a gmail account. what is his email anyway, I heard it was [e-mail]..

Re:Well..

You shouldn't put his email address online! Spammers have bots that can harvest links like [e-mail] [mailto]. so make sure you never do that.

My earlier (rejected) story submission...

Bill Gates world's most spammed man
CNN [cnn.com] and Rediff [rediff.com] are reporting that Bill Gates [mailto] gets 4 million e-mails a day, making him world's most spammed person. However, unlike lesser mortals, he has an entire department dedicated to filter unsolicited e-mails and only a few of them actually get through to his inbox, said Steve Ballmer [mailto] at a Microsoft Research event in Singapore. Other sources are also reporting [google.com] the breaking news story.

Re:My earlier (rejected) story submission...

The "entire department" thing sounded quite a bit like an exageration, especially since he said, "Literally, there's a whole department, almost, that takes care of it."

In other words, "We pay two kids $5/hr to sit in the basement and sift through this crap."

Or more likely, "We've got a couple network admins that implemented SpamAssassin for us."

Thank you spammers

For *once* I have to thank spammers for a job well done.

Now any chance on taking on SCO?

Exchange

Hmm.. 4,000,000 / 86400 (seconds in a day) = ~ 46 emails a second.

I didn't even know exchange could handle that amount of traffic. And thats just for him..

Re:Exchange

Ha. He probably secretly uses Postfix on FreeBSD :-)

Hotmail

Well, ever since hotmail upped it's space to 250mb I've been getting the same amount too.

Huh...

Aren't these just angry clients? :P

most spammed man

What does he expect when he keeps sending out those email tracking programs?

Test suite...

he could try to forward his daily mail to a gmail account to really test spam/virus protection, label classification and how much space is 1gb for that kind of traffic. Even if it works, a good promotion of whatever future service of hotmail is "it performed better than gmail with my mail".

Re:Test suite...

he could try to forward his daily mail to a gmail account to really test spam/virus protection

Right, and he could also forward his daily mail to the DOJ [usdoj.gov], so there aren't any more losses of that pesky incriminating evidence [pcworld.com]...

Story a weak troll.

Nowhere does it say Bill Gates has an entire department to filter his email (though I don't see why he should not, considering he can afford it). It says they have "special technology", and "almost" a whole department (which probably means two or three secretarial types vetting the junk that doesn't get filtered with the "special technology".

And to all of this, I say "big deal". I would say "nice M$ troll" but it's actually kind of weak.

Hate Mail

They must have hate mail confused with spam.

News for Nerds indeed.

I know I was wondering just this morning, just after breakfast, how much spam Bill Gates was getting. "Self", I said, "How many unsolicited emails does Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, get, do you think? Two hundred fifty thousand? A million? What DO you think?"

I had no answer.
Until now.

Thank you slashdot.

Your Job Sucks When

Your job must suck ass if it, in its entirety, involves sorting through another man's porn/real estate/penis enlargment/cum filled panty spam.

I can see it now, job description:

Must be able to sort legitimate email from mass unsolicited email. Ability to tolerate apes a plus, as you will be working a team of them. In fact, your department manager is a chimp. Requires opposable thumbs and general image recognition abilities.

Fascinating!

"And so we have special technology which just filters (spam)."

And what do you call this special technology? What a brilliant new development. Please, Mr. Balmer, you must share this invention with the rest of us. Or, perhaps, is it "sendmail" on "linux" running "spamassassin"? Ah, yes, perhaps so.

Maybe the admins at my work are just braindead, but apparently everyone's so nervous about Exchange 2000 that they won't run any other mail related software on the Exchange server. So if we want to filter email with other software, it goes on a separate box, and they all get chained together. Which means that if they ever want to find out where an email came from, they have to go through three different sets of logs. This is all black magic to me. I code VBA for a living.

Is there a right way on Exchange 2000? We'd do all kinds of better spam filtration if implementation was completely better.

640 emails....

....ought to be about enough for anyone. ;-)

Another incomplete article

Like most "news" today, the article says Bill Gates is probably the most spammed person in the world - but gives no frame of reference.

For example, how much spam does the Whitehouse get?

Do they cite the number of spams the average person gets? There is nothing other than the obvious in that article.

The article might have well said it is probably cold in Antartica too.

Gates: use Mozilla Thunderbird's Junk Mail feature

Somebody should tell him to install Thunderbird.

Unfiltered

It's rumoured that if you email billg from inside MS it goes directly to him, the idea being if you're stupid enough to send him a stupid email directly then maybe you should be fired for wasting his time.

That said, after going to an intern dinner at his house I wrote him afterwards asking a question I was sure no one else care about if I acked it at the dinner, I got a relatively quick if not short response.

Another intern friend of mine emailed him asking if he wanted to go to lunch sometime and never got a response.

I've also had some other funny run ins with Bill Gates while interning at MS that I wrote up a while ago in my journal [slashdot.org]

Re:Unfiltered

I used to work for Oracle. I once sent Larry a rather critical email. I didn;t get sacked or a reply, either, so I don't know if he got it.

Oracle internal email system used to be so crap that it got confused if people had the same first name and sent them each others email. I shared the same first name with the VP of Consulting for EMEA (I was working in Hamburg at the time). I once received an email from Big Man's secretary to him asking if he wanted to confirm his meeting with some IBM execs. I replied to her saying that she should tell IBM to Bugger Off and to get on the phone to the head of consulting in Hamburg and to give that Phil guy a large pay rise.

A couple of days later my boss called me into his office and told me "Please don't do that again"

Good.

I hope his pee cee gets lots of viruses too. :-)

Condolences Card

This is so sad.

I thought I'd send Mr William Gates a brief cheer-up note:

Dear Bill,
I just heard that you are the most spammed person in the world and I thought I'd send you a cheering-up note. Since that must really suck.

I mean I know he's rich and everything, but even rich guys must get the blues sometimes over things like spam. I'm sure he'd appreciate it if a few of us sent him our condolences.

Does anybody know his address?

Back in 1994...

He got only 200 emails a day [google.com]

It's not [e-mail]

See this article [google.com], [e-mail] did exist and in 1993 you could email him and get a reply, but even back then it wasn't Bill Gates.

Sure, make me feel bad for him...

Aww man... Now I almost feel bad for setting the "anonymous FTP password" on every browser I touch to "[e-mail]".

Probably not his real email address, but still, he apparently doesn't need any more help.

Bill Gs outlook rule

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