An overflowing inbox is a risk: more sensitive data, more chance of leaks and slower searching. Only keep what you need.
Imagine A growing consultancy firm is flooded every day with emails from clients, partners and suppliers. Thousands of emails are kept, and storage is slowly filling up. Time to buy extra storage? Or not?
Worldwide, 4.4 billion people use email. Together they send around 347.3 billion emails a day, and on average a person receives 121 a day. Email is indispensable, but keeping too many emails has consequences that are often overlooked: technical, economic, ecological and for your security.
A large mailbox gets slower: opening and searching take longer, and your mail app responds less smoothly. Your computer can slow down too, and continuously syncing a large mailbox drains battery on your Mac, iPhone or iPad.
Excess storage costs money: licences for extra storage, but also backups of your mail environment. A good backup easily costs 2 to 5 euros per GB. If you save important files to the cloud before deleting the email, they're also better organised and easier to find.
Storing emails in data centres takes a lot of energy. Data centres account for about 2% of global CO2 emissions, partly due to server cooling. Keeping only the emails you really need reduces your organisation's ecological footprint.
Emails often contain company data and attachments. That's why email is one of hackers' main targets. On top of that, some third-party applications have access to your mailbox. Download important attachments and messages to a well-secured cloud environment, then delete or archive the email.
Source: Carbon Literacy, The carbon cost of an email
In short
An overflowing mailbox slows systems down and makes backups more expensive Sensitive attachments belong in a secure cloud environment, not in your inbox Archive what you need to keep, delete the rest
The information in this article is intended as general knowledge about using Apple products in a professional environment. Your organisation may have its own policies that restrict certain features or software. Always consult your organisation's IT policy before changing anything on company hardware or software.
