Anti-Spam Legislation

Canada Anti-Spam Law Bill C-28

There has been some concern regarding the Anti-Spam Legislation that is coming into effect in the near future. After doing some online research and speaking with a representative of legislation office, I have some information to share.

What is this Legislation?
This new law will affect any individual, business and organization that:

  • Makes use of commercial electronic messages
  • Is involved with alteration of transmission data
  • Produce of installs computer programs

The sender will need to obtain consent from recipients before sending the message and will need to include information that identifies the sender and enables the recipient to withdraw consent.

More Information

 

Who does this affect?
Anyone who sends electronic newsletters and mass communications, engaging in commercial activity, organizations posting information selling products or services, including tickets to fundraisers and asking for donations. If you do not engage in this type of activity, this won’t affect you.

How do to comply with this law?
When a person signs up for your emailing list, you must send them an email asking them to confirm their email address and intent to receive your emails.  There also needs to be an obvious unsubscribe option on all communications.  This needs to happen both moving forward as well as retroactively.  If you distribute mass electronic emails, engaging in commercial activity, everyone on your current mailing list needs to be asked to “opt-in.”

When will this law be enforced?
There is still no enforcement date for this law. The legislation office stated that it will be in early 2014 and they hope to update their website before the end of 2012 with more accurate information. Once the law is being enforced, organizations who are affected will have 36 months to update their existing network with the “opt-in” process.

I hope that this has been helpful and please feel free to contact me if you have questions about this.

Sarah Evans

Sarah Evans
Administrative Coordinator
Pacific AIDS Network

[email protected]