All email users throughout the world, including consumers and businesses, struggle with the scourge of spam email. The costs and risks associated with spam have been well documented and have led to attempts by both government and private industry to curtail spam.
A recent report by ICF International and McAfee titled “The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report” reveals:
An estimated worldwide total of 62 trillion spam emails were sent in 2008
Globally, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh), or 33 terawatt hours (TWh). equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the United States, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gasoline
Spam filtering saves 135 TWh of electricity per year. That’s like taking 13 million cars off the road
If every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter, organizations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by approximately 75 percent or 25 TWh per year. That’s equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road
A year’s email at a typical medium-size business uses 50,000 KWh; more than one fifth of that annual use can be associated with spam
Filtering spam is beneficial, but fighting spam at the source is even better.
Much of the energy consumption associated with spam (80 percent) comes from end-users deleting spam and searching for legitimate email (false positives).
Spam filtering accounts for just 16 percent of spam related energy use
The average GHG emission associated with a single spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2. That’s like driving three feet (one meter) in equivalent emissions, but when multiplied by the annual volume of spam, it’s like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times
Think 3 times before you spam anybody, or better still - DON'T!
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