A Game Called Spam

Let's contrast that number to the inbox of the, "Most Spammed Man Alive" - one Senior Bill Gates. Reports indicate that Mr. Gates gets upwards of 4 million emails each day. Most of those messages are best described as spam.

To put that in perspective, that would be 10,000 times as many spam emails as my own inbox gets. There's an old saying that goes something like, "If I only had a dime for every time I..."

Well, if the topic was junk email, Bill Gates could put away another 146 million dollars each year. If he invested that money in the stock market, some day it could really add up to be worth something. This is assuming the steered clear of MSFT.

While much of this email is machine filtered, rumor has it that many of the more questionable messages get processed by real human beings. Long ago, I actually knew Bill's, "administrator" - Microsoft speak for a super-human working as a high-level secretary. Today he likely has a small army genetically engineered post-humans managing his personal information processing needs. A safe bet is that he doesn't entirely depend on any of Microsoft's own antispam tools.

My bet is that Bill is subject to some ongoing malicious activity. Many people don't like him due to his success. Many people don't like him for other reasons.

A lot of people aren't that fond of him due to the software his company produces having so many security issues. This brings us to a point of irony. In all likelihood, Mr. Gates is specifically being targeted by spam zombies. Much the way that various websites are constantly subjected to attempted denial-of-service attacks, his inbox is probably also under attack.

Most spam zombies are Windows systems that have had their security compromised in one way or another. Often, the reason for this is flaws within the operating system. Some of these flaws have available fixes. However, a few recent alarming problems do not have ready solutions.

Linux and Mac OS also have their security problems. If they are actually more secure, or just less likely to be exploited by hackers is up for debate. Linux and Macintosh systems also compose a smaller percentage of all systems on the internet; making it less profitable to research potential exploitations for them. Another security advantage of Linux systems is the myriad of different possible versions. Each combination of software is subject to a different set of possible hacks. This lends to a type of security via obscurity.

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