Canadian Government Presents New Anti-spam Law

The Conservative government of Canada, on April 24, 2009, presented its new anti-spam legislation that could arrest the most viciously appearing e-mail spam. Canada.com published this on April 24, 2009.

The legislation, if passed, will serve as one more tool over and above the anti-spam initiatives thus far by Canadian Police, Canadian service providers, and international agencies of law enforcement.

States the proposed law that the Electronic Commerce Protection Act would forbid the dispatch of commercial e-mails that do not acquire recipients' prior consent.

Besides, the law would provide consumers and businesses the legal right to file suits against Canadian-based malware senders. Consequently, there could be fines as large as $10m for organizations and $1m for individuals.

Accordingly, this would help increase faith in online transactions through the protection of personal security and privacy, related to phishing websites, spam and spyware, officials from the Government of Canada said. ITWorldCanada reported this on April 24, 2009.

Meanwhile, Spokesman Shawn Hall for Internet provider Telus in Canada admits, spam is a serious problem as it mainly originates from foreign countries. ITWorldCanada reported this. Hall added, the proposed law would, however, require a joint initiative to combat spam.

He further added that his company was happy about the introduction of the legislation for, it provided legal support towards the prevention of spammers in Canada from blasting unsolicited messages along with potentially perilous malware.

Moreover, according to the officials, the law is expected to bring Canada at par with other developed nations so far as anti-spam legislation is concerned. In fact, since Canada is one among a small group of developed countries that do not have an anti-malware legislation, the move is sure to be appreciated.

However, there is doubt about the law's effectiveness, according to certain security analysts who state that there is need for a worldwide response particularly from Russia and China the predominant spam players in light of the gigantic problem of spam.

Meanwhile, other security experts stated that the proposed law closely resembled Australia's 2004 anti-spam act, which helped the country to get eliminated from the global List of Top Ten spam-producing nations.

Related article: Canadian Retailer Faces Security Breach of Customer Credit Numbers

» SPAMfighter News - 5/1/2009