ates, the president and founder of Microsoft, receives four million e-mails per day and is probably the person who receives the most spam in the world, “said the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer.

However, only a few manage to slip junk mail to the mailbox of a technology through Gates’ anti-spam that filters his messages, Ballmer said at a Microsoft event in Singapore.

The unsolicited e-mails covering a broad spectrum, from aphrodisiacs to home loans and is estimated to represent over 80 percent of Internet traffic.

spam came to represent 83 percent of computer traffic at one point this year and has cost Internet providers about $ 500 million (about 360 million euros) in wasted bandwidth, analysts have said.

By November 2008, AOL received an average of 2.2 million complaints daily from more than 24 million subscribers, down from 11 million complaints in the same period last year.

The average daily emails blocked by AOL’s spam filters fell 50 percent to around 1,200 million e-mails in late 2008 from a peak of 2,400 million.

Attempts by those who send unwanted e-mails also dropped to approximately 1,600 million per day, 2,100 million last year.

AOL launched a new version of its software, AOL 9.0 Security Edition in November, including a free version of McAfee VirusScan Online software and improved anti-spam tools.

The company is also part of a coalition of the technology industry comprised of Microsoft, EarthLink and Yahoo Inc., which has vigorously fought the case with trading e-mails, which are hidden through false addresses

The Attorney General of the State of Florida, Charlie Crist, said the penalty to prevent these men continue to send emails tricksters is part of its first actions under the anti-spam law passed last year.

The men, Scott Filary, 25, and Donald Townsend, 34, both of Tampa, are accused of sending over 65,000 emails, many with a false case and hidden source.

Emails sent to recipients to websites that Crist said were related to fraud or illegal activities, such as selling pharmaceuticals and cigarettes over the Internet or to supply a platform for illegal downloads of copyrighted movies.

The research was assisted by the software giant, Microsoft, whose operating system, Windows runs on more than 90 percent of computers worldwide.

The anti-spam law in Florida may be fined up to $ 500 (385 euros) by email, or $ 24 million in the case where the two accused, said Crist in a statement.

The national anti-spam law took effect in early 2004 but has done little to stem the collapse of litter caused by email spam.

It is estimated that over 80 percent of email traffic consists of spam, costing companies billions of dollars a year, lost productivity and bandwidth.

A court in Virginia this week jailed a man in North Carolina for nine years for sending millions of spam emails, but the court postponed the sentence while the case was appealed. This is the first prosecution for a ’spammer’.