More on Ballmer's Spam Comments -- After my tongue-in-cheek piece about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's claim that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates receives 4 million spam messages per day, two bits of relevant clarification have appeared. First, in an interview with journalist Mike Wendland, Ballmer says he misspoke and Bill Gates actually receives 4 million pieces of spam every year, not every day. Just a slight difference there, but 4 million per year works out to almost 11,000 per day, which is still rather high, if not stratospheric. I could easily see other people receiving more; one TidBITS reader reported receiving about 4,000 per day due to worm-generated spam from the infected computers of other parents and teachers at his kids' school.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07911>
<http://mikesejournal.com/archives/003089.php>

Second, although it's entirely likely that spammers don't like Gates and Ballmer and thus are targeting them directly in a sort of a denial-of-service attack, a number of people suggested that a more logical explanation is that lots of Internet users, when asked for an email address in Web forms of questionable legitimacy, enter billg@microsoft.com, thus avoiding the privacy concerns of giving their email addresses out, and, shall we say, expressing an opinion. I hadn't considered such a situation, but if lots of people around the Internet do it, that could explain the 11,000 spam messages a day that Gates receives. Lastly, be sure to check out the Joy of Tech cartoon on the whole situation for a trenchant comment. [ACE]

<http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/ joyarchives/621.html>