In a report published today the physical effect spam has upon our environment has been quantified. The energy used in the lifecycle of spam is equivalent to that of 2.4 million homes in the United States!

Interestingly the vast majority of energy consumption is from users viewing and sifting through spam emails, the report estimates that if every one used spam-filtering it would reduce energy consumption by 75%. We’ve got some pretty good spam filtering available for our customers to use, so now is a great time to make sure you’ve got it activated.

Vast amounts of spam is sent from zombie PCs; those infected by viruses sending out spam without their owners even knowing it. So make sure you’ve got protection installed on your computer; that doesn’t necessarily mean expensive annual subscriptions as there are several excellent anti-virus programs that are completely free.

I use Avira AntiVir Personal on all my family and friend’s computers (when I do a bit of technical support moonlighting) and its never let me down, I’ve also heard good things about AVG Free.

So make sure you’re with a good email provider, check that your anti-virus is up-to-date and it’s another way to do your bit for our planet.