Report measures environmental impact of spam
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Spam emails take energy to create, send, filter, read and delete, meaning the monumental spam problem is also a problem for the environment by contributing to carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new report.
According to the report, released by a large web security and anti virus protection company, the average business email user contributes 131 kg of CO2 per year in email-related emissions - with 22 percent of that coming from receiving, viewing and deleting spam.
"While the spam that arrives in any individual's inbox may create just a small puff of CO2, the puff multiplied by millions of users worldwide adds up," according to the report, compiled for the security company by consulting company ICF International.
The energy used by email filtering devices and by recipients who must view and delete spam that has evaded the filters (false negatives) and check for legitimate mail caught in filters (false positives) contributes to the overall problem, the report said.
Manually sorting, viewing and deleting spam and searching for false positives uses almost 18 billion KWh per year, or 52 percent of total spam-related energy use, the report said. Approximately 104 billion user hours per year go to reading and manually deleting spam.
Related News:
FBI: Law firms and PR agencies high on hacker target lists - 11.18.2009
Using complex email scams, cyber criminals are increasingly targeting sensitive information held by law firms and public relations companies, according to an FBI advisory released earlier this month.
Phishing email takes numerous forms - 11.17.2009
The practice of impersonating authoritative websites and sources in order to convince victims to divulge personal information - known as phishing - has come a long way from the Nigerian "419" scams that popularized the technique in the public mind. Modern phishing is becoming increasingly dangerous in part because attacks can come from a variety of sources.
Email filtering technology working overtime, but spam won't go quietly - 11.16.2009
While modern email filtering systems can block 95 to 99 percent of spam messages, according to Tech Target, mountains of unsolicited email are still delivered every day, accounting for the vast majority of all emails sent.
Phishing scam targets investors, spoofs finance agency - 10.9.2009
The Financial Industry Regulatory Agency (FINRA), an independent regulator of brokerages, is warning investors that they may be targeted by a phishing scam through emails claiming to come from the agency.
Phishing scammers leak Windows Live Hotmail passwords to web - 10.6.2009
Hackers posted thousands of passwords from Windows Live Hotmail email accounts to a website over the weekend, in what Microsoft said was the result of a phishing campaign targeting the free webmail service.
|
