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The Ecological Impact of Spam
krou writes "A new study entitled 'The Carbon Footprint of Spam' (PDF) published by ICF International and commissioned by McAfee claims that spam uses around 33 billion kilowatt hours of energy annually, which is approximately enough to power 2.4 million US homes (or roughly 3.1 million cars) for a year. They calculated that the average CO2 emission for a spam email is around 0.3 grams. Interestingly, the majority of energy usage (around 80%) comes from users viewing and deleting spam, and searching for legitimate emails within spam filters. They also claim that 'An individual company can find that one fifth of the energy budget of its email system is wasted on spam.' One of the report's authors, Richi Jennings, writes on his blog that 'spam filtering actually saves an incredible amount of energy.' He continues, 'Imagine if every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter. We could save about 75% of the spam energy used today — 25 TWh per year; that's like taking 2.3 million cars off the road.""
Imagine if every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter. We could save about 75% of the spam energy used today â" 25 TWh per year; that's like taking 2.3 million cars off the road.
My God! That is fantastic! If only we had the option to purchase a "state-of-the-art spam filter!" Wait, I know! McAfee, the people who sponsored and paid for this research, have SpamKiller! It's perfect.
... that would have to be some pretty impressive and efficient Bayesian filtering with an amazing database technology to drop below viewing and deleting e-mails.
Although I can't access the PDF (download hangs), could you please direct me to the part of the 'research' where you analyze the amount of energy used to perform complex computational functions on tokens from e-mails against a database. And prove that this is less than the energy wasted flipping though e-mails and deleting spam? I mean, the network usage is going to be the same so
And maybe you could factor in the cost and subscription to said state-of-the-art spam filter?
What? You didn't include that analysis in your research? It sounds like a very crucial part of convincing me to acquire a state-of-the-art spam filter. You missed that part?
You don't say.
My work here is dung.
I don't care what anybody else says, we need a new protocol for messaging. It could combine the best parts of email with the best parts of social networking/IM/SMS and surpass them all. We need a network where there is some way to ascertain the origin of any email/account. We need automatic encryption. We can still keep SMTP around, there's no need to kill it (so we can have anonymous networks), but we need something else now. I know, I know, easier said than done and put your money where your mouth is, but for my part, I am trying to use email less and less, while switching to Facebook/Twitter/SMS to get in touch with people.
Or far less than one container ship.
I know, that's for particulate and SO2 emissions, not CO2.
But still, kind of puts things in perspective, huh? Imagine if we bought fewer consumer goods from 8000 miles away... and how much less energy would be consumed. It could dwarf the savings from spam filtering -- not that this makes spam filtering any less of a good idea.
On a side note, I'd like to propose a new standard unit for the metrically challenged.
Superfreighter -- a unit for large amounts of particulate and SO2 pollution. Approximately equal to 50 million cars.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If we worry about wasted computer cycles, I'm sure unnecessary screen savers are responsible for many orders of magnitude more. Or leaving flash animation ads running while you are not looking at it.
The majority of the energy is spent reading the spam and searching spam folders for legit mail, right?
So where is that energy coming from / going? Perhaps you're counting the energy of running my PC while I'm doing those things? But what's your "0 energy" baseline? Are you assuming that 30 secnods of me searching my email = 30 additional seconds before my computer gets to swtich to power-save mode? Because that's not always true -- it often means 30 seconds less of me playing some game before my ride shows up, and the computer goes to sleep at the same time it would've otherwise.
Maybe its the energy the server spends reading the email from disk that's significant. That might be a vaild concern...
Please stop responding to SPAM. If no one responds to it, then they won't make any money and they'll stop. Sincerely, A. Bettik
Can you actually respond to them? I once got a spam email and I was in a really pissed off mood and wanted to take it out on someone who deserved it, so I tried to contact the spammer. The email they included didn't work. There wasn't any phone number. I couldn't find any way of contacting them. I can't believe some of those morons actually make any money. Sometimes, I wonder if it's the ISPs that host those assholes that are pushing this shit. Maybe convincing stupid people that they can get rich sending mass electronic marketing or some other made up buzz word that obfuscates the fact that they are selling you a spammer package. Moron spammer buys it, sends out a bunch of emails, and then gives up after a while; only to have another moron take his place? Just guessing.
I have determined that email spam kills small children! And puppies! And endangered sand panthers!
The only way we can save our planet from the ecological abuse that is spam is for you to send me money. Lots of money. And then I'll jolly well put a stop to that! And I will too.
We could treat spammers like some middle eastern countries treat thieves.
CUT OFF THEIR HANDS!
Without hands, they can't type out spam messages!
"Lame" - Galaxar