Seatlle, June 24: Microsoft Corp. is assembling a team of experts charged with battling the accelerating spread of spam as unsolicited e-mail clogs in-boxes worldwide, including that of Bill Gates, founder and chairman of the world's largest software maker. At risk is the usefulness of e-mail itself, which has allowed people to communicate more quickly and efficiently, said Kevin Doerr, who has been named to direct Microsoft's spam-fighting strategy.
"Where it hurts most is customer satisfaction. But when it starts to change behavior, we could have consumers turn away from email, and that has huge implications," Microsoft's Doerr said.

Microsoft now blocks more than 2.4 billion spam messages daily. North American e-mail users are expected, on average, to see the number of spam e-mails that they receive daily more than triple over the next three years to 35 messages per day, according to Ferris Research.
A team of about 20 people from across Microsoft is now working to come up with ways to fight spam. That team will grow by about another third in coming months, Doerr said. Bureau Report