For Canada Day, our country’s Parliament gave Canadians a birthday present: an anti-spam legislation that would ensure electronic users have the option to free themselves from the suffocation of Internet spam.
The new legislation was praised by many as an important step for Canadians to control where their digital information goes. However, further research has me a little disheartened. This new law may not help un-clutter our inboxes at all.
As of July 1, commercial businesses across the true north are now required to ask their customers for express (meaning deliberate or conscious) consent to recieve commercial messages via email, text, and social media, to provide clear identification of the company or individual sending the message, and to provide an obvious “unsubscribe” button should users want to cancel their torture.
This rather abrupt legislation has had companies shaking in their boots as they frantically fine-tune their spamming methods to avoid penalties that make the law one of the toughest to date — up to $1 million per violation for an individual, and $10 million per company.
But after Canada finally enacted the law, Canadians were given another unsuspecting birthday surprise: a hell of a lot more spam. Inboxes, including my own, began filling with relentless emails that begged and pleaded to be approved, emails from companies I didn’t even know I’d been involved with.
“Please!” Viagra sobbed. “Click ‘I agree’ so I can keep bombarding you with products you won’t need for another 40 years!”
Professional spammers will undoubtedly try to edge past the new system.
While some inboxes were flooded with hundreds of emails, other issues arose as well. Canada’s long-forgotten Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) dragged itself feebly from beneath the mounds and reminded us that we already had an anti-spam law in place. PIPEDA then shook its head in defeat as Canadians realized the extent to which businesses had poorly adhered to its original privacy laws.
And while the new laws may benefit users in preventing large-scale companies from defecating in our computer screens, it unfortunately hinders small businesses from expanding and becoming successful. As one business owner told the CBC on June 24, “We find we can connect with like-minded customers [through social media. . .] We would rather be spending our time with our customers than trying to figure out how to do this properly so we don’t get fined ridiculous fees.”
On another note, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that professional spammers will undoubtedly try to edge past the new system. Out-of-country spamming is an option which would not be subject to penalty. Spammers could also create more enticing mechanisms to capture and tempt those curious consumer eyes.
But what bothers me the most about this new legislation is that Canadians already had the tools to protect their privacy and prevent commercial annoyances. Most email accounts are equipped with a spam-sorter, where users can input those pesky addresses into the system and permanently block them. If, maybe, we had a little more patience, we could find the time to pluck the rotten from the ripe and save ourselves the future online hassles.
While this was an attempt to empower us with online privacy, I fear this new legislation will simply be useless. When the power of the human mind and the Internet’s precarious nature combine forces, our law-makers will realize they spent all that time and effort for nothing.
