Spam generates 131 kg of CO2 emissions per user a year
17 Apr 2009
Spam, or unsolicited email, has long been the bane of the Internet, consuming precious bandwidth and time. However, a latest study has come out with the adverse effect millions of spam have on the environment at large.
The mere act of people around the world deleting spam and searching for legitimate e-mail falsely labeled as junk creates the annual energy consumption of 33 billion kilowatt-hours, equivalent in the US of 2.4 million homes using electricity and the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of fuel.
That's according to "The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report" conducted by climate-change consultants ICF and commissioned by security vendor McAfee.
The average greenhouse gas emission associated with one spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2, about the same as driving three feet in equivalent emissions. When multiplied by the 62 trillion spam e-mails sent globally, that is like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times. The study found that the average business user generates 131kg of CO2 every year, of which 22 per cent is related to spam.
Eighty per cent of the energy consumption associated with spam messages come from people having to do spam maintenance, the report found. Spam filtering accounts for only 16 per cent of the energy use and saves the electrical equivalent of taking 13 million cars off the road per year.
The carbon footprint study looked at global energy expended to create, store, view and filter spam across 11 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, India, Mexico, Spain and the US. If spam filters were used universally, the energy saved would be equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road, the report said.
The report highlights the case of McColo, a US web-hosting firm that had ties to spammers. The day after it was taken offline by its two Internet service providers, global spam volume fell by 70 per cent. Although the respite was only temporary, McAfee said the "day without spam amounted to talking 2.2 million cars off the road" and that tackling spam should be part of the campaign to reduce carbon emissions. (See: Global spam levels drop dramatically as ISPs shut down McColo)
The report follows only a few days after Symantec's bi-annual Internet Security Threat report, which found that spam had increased by 192 per cent, with bot networks responsible for approximately 90 per cent of all spam e-mail.
