First things first, no I’m not talking about the mystery meat in the can. Although I probably should be, because that is absolute crap as well. Do we really need to can our meat? I think we have progressed technologically enough to the point where frozen or fresh meat is the better way, but that’s another story. What I want to address is the huge problem everyone with an email account faces everyday. A clutter of unwanted emails or spam.
How about instead of cracking down on drug dealers who provide a supply to the consistent demand for drugs we focus our efforts on those supplying useless crap to where there is no demand. Don’t send me emails all the time saying how you have pictures of Angelina Jolie naked or you know how to make my breasts larger naturally. Spam has been so rarely enforced to the point it has spread to all mediums on the internet including blogs, instant messages, forums, wiki entries, text messages, and of course email.
According to an internet security company, globally the annual energy used to transmit, process and filter spam is 33 terawatt hours (TWh). That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using 2 billion gallons of gasoline. That is 17 million metric tons of CO2 or about .2% of the world’s carbon emissions. Not that it really matters or like carbon footprints even mean anything since no one seems to want to make a significant change. The company also reported that 62 trillion spam emails were sent out last year and compromises up to 90% of your inbox. I’d like to thank gmail for doing a great job of banishing the majority of this crap to the spam bin.
So where do these spammers come from? It can be done by anyone and costs next to nothing to do, and according to recent studies the leading spammer in the world is the US at about 28% which topples the second highest country who comes in at a minuscule 5%. Worldwide it is estimated to cost the public about 10 billion euros or about 13.2 billion dollars back in 2001. Studies reported spam costs in the United States organizations alone more than $13 billion from lost productivity and the additional equipment, software, and manpower needed to combat the problem in 2007. All of this just for some messages that only get read once every 200,000 to 12,000,000 times a message is sent. The issue is growing and is a serious threat to everyone as it can be used for identity fraud, computer viruses, human greed as in the case of overseas money laundering schemes, and basically tricking the common or unknowing user into spreading such spam and becoming another source.
Some of the possible means used to stop spamming may lead to other negative side effects, such as increased government control over the Internet, loss of privacy, barriers to free expression, and the commercialization of e-mail. There has to be a better way to help the public and still catch the bad guys. Let’s bring this topic to the main stage and start coming up with some solutions otherwise I dont know how much longer I can hold off from seeing what kind of nifty supplements some Nigerian pharmacy has to offer me. Oh and to the spammers out there, the whole trying to be tricky with your subject lines by putting in hi, re:, fwd:, and other personal greetings isn’t going to work on me anymore.
Filed under: internet, other Tagged: | CO2 Emissions, email, environment, government, internet, scam, spam
