It's good to see that a
security vendor, who deals with Internet safety threats regularly, is
supporting the proposed anti-spam legislation in Canada.
The saga of the Canadian anti-spam laws is not likely to end
anytime soon. Bill C-27, the proposed legislation, has evoked mixed
reactions from the Canadian public. On one hand, the business community
believes that the act might become a hindrance for online marketing
while on the other; the general population supports the bill. In an
action which is likely to please a majority of email users across
Canada, Conservative MPs have decided to do away with exemptions they
had approved earlier. With these exemptions discarded, businesses will
have to get a prospective recipient’s permission before sending any
mails.
The latest voice to have come in support of this bill is of
Matt Sergeant, Senior Anti-spam Technologist for Symantec Hosted
Services. Matt said that the decision to go ahead with the legislation
is welcome news for Canadian email users and IT managers. Most
companies, which have an online presence, also have spam filters in
place. For the IT sector, these spam filters are completely a cost
center as they gain nothing except clearing out stuff they do not want.
Most of the Canadian Internet users will agree that the
anticipated introduction of the act is taking far too much time. The
more time the government takes to pass the act, the more businesses are
likely to suffer with spam.
It's not only businesses that suffer; users are also on the
lookout for good quality information, which companies take a lot of
effort to put together. When recipients’ inboxes are flooded with spam,
they might accidentally delete a newsletter or an ezine that they’ve
subscribed to. Consequently, users don’t get information they want and
the efforts companies take to craft their email
marketing campaign come to nothing.
The only viable solution for this problem is to pass new and
strict anti-spam laws. Once these laws are in place, the proportion of
spam mails will reduce and legitimate marketing emails will move a lot
more freely.
With spam levels in Canada already higher than current global
averages, the Canadian authorities have a clear agenda ahead of them;
to reduce the amount of spam in Canadia cyberspace, as it were. To
achieve this, Canadian authorities could draw up legislation along the
lines of the American CAN SPAM act.
Source:
http://www.itworldcanada.com/ViewArticle.aspx?url=bill-c-27-gains-support-from-symantec-spam-expert
