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Canada Dropping the Ball on Spam, Expert Says

by Lee Bains on December 4, 2008 at 12:54 PM



One prominent Ottawa professor is blaming lax Canadian legislation for what he identifies as a proliferation of spammers in the country, Ars Technica points out.

The Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa's School of Law, Geist cites a report by anti-spam software provider Cloudmark in his claims that Canada has emerged as a safe haven for spammers. That report found that Canadian servers shipped out the fifth largest volume of worldwide, Web-based e-mail spam, outdone only by Iran, Nigeria, Kenya, and Israel.

Ars Technica, though, cites a study by Cloudmark-competitor Sophos that placed Canada well outside of the top ten spam-producing countries -- interestingly, the United States is ranked numero uno.

Regardless of specific data, everybody seems to agree that Canada needs anti-spam legislation. In fact, Canada is the only G-7 country not to have anti-spam legislation in place.

To our reckoning, if the Great White North isn't crawling with spammers now, by the time that news gets out, it will be. [From: MichaelGeist.ca via Ars Technica]

Tags: canada, e-mail, security, spam, spammers, study, web

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