Are you tired of receiving more unsolicited email than solicited one?

The Honourable Senator Goldstein is and yesterday, he gave the opening speech for the second reading of his anti-spam bill, S-220, An Act respecting commercial electronic messages (the Anti-Spam Act). If passed, the bill would crack down on spam by prohibiting the sending of commercial emails to Canadians without their prior consent.

I have to say that it is about time. Everyone who has an email account has suffer from «spam» or «phishing» attacks, which occur when spam messages lure email users to fraudulent websites resembling those of trusted businesses in the hopes that the users will be fooled into entering their user names, passwords, or other information that can be used to gain access to their online accounts.

Anti-spam softwares were unsuccessful to protect the common user from these attacks and Senator Goldstein Anti-Spam act might be the answer. In fact, as Senator Goldstein says “Yet despite the widespread recognition that spam is a serious problem that costs our economy billions in fraud and lost productivity, Canada remains the only G8 country without anti-spam legislation.” 

Furthermore, he believes that “To compete in the 21st century, Canada must be able to harness the vast commercial potential of the internet without worrying about security.» According to him «The measures in bill S-220 are urgently needed to protect Canadians from cybercrime and to restore confidence in the internet as a platform for business. »

Let’s wish he is right and in the meantime, let’s be vigilant!

Fact to be noted, the email containing the information was unsolicited and failed to fall in any of the categories proposed by the act.

More details here