Green.view: Can the spam | The Economist

Green.view: Can the spam | The Economist: "Can the spam

Jun 15th 2009
From Economist.com
Spam is not only irritating, it is bad for the environment

ON JUNE 12th a judge in California referred a lawsuit against Sanford Wallace, who styles himself “the king of spam”, to the United States Attorney’s office for possible criminal proceedings. Mr Wallace is being pursued by Facebook, a social network, for allegedly gaining fraudulent access to Facebook accounts and using them to distribute unsolicited messages. He has already been ordered to pay $230m to MySpace, another social network, for using that company’s site to promote pornography and gambling. Mr Wallace filed for bankruptcy on June 11th.

Such behaviour is not only antisocial, it is also bad for the environment. According to a report from an environmental consultancy, ICF International, commissioned by McAfee, a computer-security company, some 62 trillion unsolicited e-mails were sent in 2008, using 33 terawatt hours of electricity. That is equivalent to the energy consumed by 1.5m American homes or 3.1m cars over a year. If generated by coal-fired power stations it would release 17m tonnes of carbon dioxide, some 0.2% of global emissions of this greenhouse gas.
AFP

The consultants estimated the quantities of carbon dioxide emitted at various stages of spam production in 11 countries: America, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, India, Mexico and Spain. They found that the early processes were relatively benign. Harvesting e-mail addresses, creating spam, sending it over the internet and storing it on mail servers each accounted for 2% or less of the emissions.

It was only when people became involved that the figures soared, because dealing with spam is a waste of their time and of their computer’s resources. Viewing spam accounted for about half the emissions. Scanning in-boxes to identify unsolicited messages and delete them accounted for a quarter. Running software that filters such messages accounted for a sixth.

The study looked at the consequences of closing down spammers. On November 11th 2008, an American web-hosting service called McColo, which helped distribute spam, was disconnected by its internet-service provider. Overnight there was a 70% fall in the number of spam messages. For every unsent message, there was a benefit to the planet. The consultants reckon that the reduction was the same as taking 2.2m cars off the road, albeit temporarily, until the spammers re-established themselves elsewhere.

Because people, rather than automated software, create legitimate e-mail messages, the emissions associated with these are higher than for spam. Each personal message generated by your correspondent produces four grams of carbon dioxide, as she takes time in front of her computer to draft a message, and its recipients consider the missive’s contents. By contrast, spam messages generate just 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide. But their sheer quantity makes them noxious: more than 80% of e-mails are thought to be spam.

Should your correspondent consider offsetting the carbon-dioxide emissions associated with writing this column, itself a consequence of the deluge of spam? Perhaps. The chances of persuading Mr Wallace to do so look slim indeed."


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