Spam wastes real energy at home and workd
If you don't have some type of filter on your home or business e-mail, you know the problem. Thousands of "spam" messages touting everything from male enhancement to Nigerian bank transfer scams.
Not only do they waste your personal time and that of your employers, but they're actually a serious waste of energy -- that's actual energy, the kind that burns fossil fuel and generates carbon dioxide.
How much?
According to the McAfee security software company, the 62 trillion junk e-mails that were sent last year used enough energy to power 2.4 million homes for a year or to drive a car around the planet 1.6 times.
And, each of those e-mail messages sent out last year created 0.3 grams of CO2 -- some 17 million metric tons worldwide, or some .2 percent of total global emissions.
That's the same amount of CO2 generated by all the cars crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in one month.
It's the same amount of energy used by Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming or Washington D.C.
That pollution is generated by PC users viewing, deleting and searching for legitimate e-mail among the piles of spam. It takes about 3 seconds to view and trash a piece of spam, according to McAfee.
Some experts suggest changing your e-mail address yearly, and other say making sure your screen name, used to post online comments, is nothing like your e-mail address. And, shut off the auto-complete feature on your browser, because it may allow spammers to harvest personal informal.
What's the solution?
Any restriction on Internet communication is an affront to the nature of the World Wide Web.
But charging even a fraction of a penny for each of those 62 trillion e-mails would not only reduce the volume of spam drastically, it would generate some serious cash for purposes like clean energy research.