how much is spam emails costing us electrically?
Computers are one of the largest consumers of electricity in the world. In fact, Google is the largest energy consumer in the world, since to run their search engine business needs a vast empire of servers that run 24/7 to meet the demands of the information age. But how about spam? I’m talking about those junk emails we get all day. Not only do these pesky emails limit our productivity but they waste tons electricity according to a study published by McAfee.
According to their study worldwide spam emails waste enough electricity to power 2.4 million homes which is equivalent to 33 billion kWh (kilowatt-hours) consumed. But how does Spam email waste electricity? You have to first understand how email works, when you send a message it has to go through the network, which is a series of wires, switches, router and servers connected together.
As your message travels through the internet (the network) its requiring those components to consume electricity, follow me here? All this wasted electricity cause by spam acutally increases our carbon emissions thus having a significant negative impact on our environment. What do you think? Is spam really contributing to the energy crisis or is this just “green washing” to sell more spam filter software? You be the judge.
