McAfee: spam destroying the planet

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 15 Apr 2009 at 17:34

McAfee is claiming that spam may be harmful to the environment, as well as being annoying.

McAfee's Carbon Footprint of Spam report claims around 80% of all email traffic is spam, with the sending, filtering and receiving of these messages consuming 33 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. McAfee claims this equates to that used by by 2.4 million US homes.

The report, conducted by climate-change consultant ICF, looked at the global energy expended to create, store, view and filter spam across 11 countries including the UK and US.

"As the world faces the growing problem of climate change, this study highlights that spam has an immense financial, personal and environmental impact on businesses and individuals," says Jeff Green, senior vice president of product development at McAfee Avert Labs.

Last November, when massive spam contributor McColo went down, the temporary drop in total spam traffic was equated to taking 2.2 million passenger vehicles off the road.

The study is reminiscent of claims made in January that two searches on Google generated the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle. These reports were later proven to have misrepresented the facts of the original study, and been wrong.