Bill Gates Dubbed Most Spammed Person In The World

Microsoft's chief executive officer Steve Ballmer told a meeting in Singapore of Gates' hassles with unwanted e-mail. According to the Reuters news service, Ballmer said Gates, chairman of Microsoft, is probably the most spammed person in the world

However, anti-spam filtering technology blocks nearly all of the offending messages with just a few getting through, Ballmer said.

In January at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Gates said Microsoft was working on various methods of blocking unwanted e-mails. At the time, Gates said the most promising approach was a monetary-based method, which calls for senders to identify themselves, requiring them to pay a penalty if they then send spam.

"Two years from now, spam will be solved," Gates said, according to media reports at the time.