Privacy Guardians Renew Efforts during Fraud Prevention Month

The federal, provincial and territorial privacy guardians in Canada are combining their respective tasks during the Month of Fraud Prevention to summon enhanced efforts in the battle against online frauds like identity theft.

On this occasion the country's Privacy Commissioner said on March 1, 2007 that the federal govt. should include spam mailing and ID theft as crimes in Criminal Code so that Canada does not become a hot bed for scam generators.

Identity theft is considered the 21st Century crime. That calls for greater protection to Canadians and halting its explosion, said the privacy officials in a joint declaration.

Canada has been experiencing a mushrooming of unsolicited bulk e-mails or spams sent for business or rather fraudulent reasons over the last few years. So has there been growth in identity fraud, said Jennifer Stoddart, Federal Privacy Commissioner at a news conference to start off the fraud prevention month.

Among the world's largest spam mails generating countries, Canada positions sixth, but remains the sole G8 country still not enacting a law against the practice, said Ms. Stoddart.

The recent data intrusion in Canada and the U.S. is an alarming call for enterprises and other organizations to establish the highest possible level of privacy safeguards to secure personal information like credit card and bank account numbers, the federal, provincial and territorial privacy officials jointly said. Consumers expect precisely this from privacy laws.

According to the statistics of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), approximately 7, 800 people claimed victims of identity theft in 2006, and losses accumulated above $16 million. But the country's Commissioner of Competition divulged that the expenses from identity thefts were billions of dollars per annum.

Ian Nielsen-Jones of the Competition Bureau of Canada called on businesses to act more responsibly particularly in making timely notification. Thestar.com published Nielsen-Jones' statement on March 2, 2007. He elaborated that the private sector on discovering incidents should not sit quiet about them but report to the affected people or the law enforcement authorities, preferably both. Such initiatives would significantly help the government in containing the overall crime.

Related article: Privacy And Data Protection Critical To Future Success

» SPAMfighter News - 3/15/2007