Internet users have long known that spam emails – offering everything from cheap medicines and sex aids to get-rich-quick schemes – are an unwanted annoyance, but new research suggests that they are also hugely damaging to the environment.More than 80% of the world’s email traffic is now spam and the transmission and receipt of unwanted email gobbles up 33bn kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, according to anti-virus software specialist McAfee. That is the equivalent of the electricity used by 2.1m US homes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/15/spam-mcafee-symantec-emails-environmentIs spam causing greenhouse gas?
Is spam causing the environmental hazard of greenhouse gas emissions?That’s what McAfee says in its “Carbon Footprint of Spam” report released Wednesday, which states climate-change researchers from the firm ICF and McAfee’s security staff calculated that the amount of energy needed to transmit, process and filter spam globally is equal to 33 billion kilowatt-hours each year. They say that can also be expressed as the equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes annually or the same green-house gas emissions from 3.1 million passenger cars using 2 billion gallons of gas.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/041409-spam-greenhouse-gas.htmlSpam E-mails Killing the Environment, McAfee Report Says [IDG]
If annoying users and wasting their time wasn’t bad enough, spam e-mails are also responsible for clogging our atmosphere with carbon dioxide, a gas that shoulders much of the blame for global warming, according to a report commissioned by antivirus vendor McAfee.”When you look at it from an individual user perspective you’re only talking about 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide per spam message,” said Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications at McAfee’s Avert Labs, in a telephone interview. “When you extrapolate the math out to the larger numbers, it definitely is significant.”
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163141/.html
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=114300
http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1142972008 spam was 62 trillion messages: McAfee
The global energy bill required to transmit, process and filter spam e-mail in 2008 totaled some 33 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to a new report commissioned by security software vendor McAfee and carried out by ICF International.According to the Carbon Footprint of Spam report, which looks at the global energy expended to create, store, view and filter spam across 11 countries, including Australia, the estimated worldwide total of 62 trillion spam emails sent in 2008 had some pretty serious environmental consequences.
http://computerworld.com.au/article/299365/
http://pcworld.idg.com.au/article/299365/
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