Spam's Carbon Footprint Worse Than 2.3M Cars

"That's because spam has a sizable carbon footprint -- using 33 billion kilowatt hours (KWh) each year, according to a report by security vendor McAfee.

"But McAfee also said that if every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter, the energy required to deal with spam could be reduced by 75 percent -- the equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road. That's because filters use less energy than humans do.

"Humans delete each spam individually, taking up to three seconds per spam e-mail. Machines are more efficient and filters account for only about 16 percent of annual spam energy use, the report found."

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