Spam messages consume the power enough for 2.4 million U.S. homes

According to a report being released on Wednesday by security company McAfee Inc. 62 trillion junk e-mails in 2008 wasted enough electricity to power 2.4 million U.S. homes for a year, reports the Associated Press. Thus the estimate of "Carbon Footprint of E-mail Spam Report" shows that that the electricity needed to process a single spam message results in 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere - the equivalent of driving 3 feet in a car.

The researchers calculated the computational power needed to process spam - from criminals tapping their armies of infected PCs to send it, Internet providers transmitting it, and end users viewing and deleting it. McAfee based its conclusions on the data provided by energy and environmental consultancy ICF International Inc.

"While the spam that arrives in any individual's inbox may create just a small puff of (carbon dioxide), the puff multiplied by millions of users worldwide adds up," McAfee wrote. 

As the report says 80% of spam's greenhouse emissions are related to the energy consumed by PCs when users are viewing, deleting, or sifting through spam looking for legitimate messages. In spite of the existence of special technology to filter spam many internet users who do not have such applications spend a significant amount of time (100 billion user-hours per year) addressing the spam coming to their inboxes. It should also be noted that spam accounts for 97% of all email.

Interestingly, spammers try to limit the size of their attachments in order to evade being detected while legitimate email on the contrary may weigh several times more than junk messages. McAfee's report revealed that a single piece of legitimate e-mail are around 4 grams of carbon dioxide - 13 times spam's emissions - because users linger on them longer and attach bigger files.

Source: The Associated Press