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Spam a Lot? Better Not Prepare to comply with new spam rules now By Wendy King T he strictest anti-spam legislation in the world could come into effect as soon as January in Canada.  Bill C-28, known as the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam bill, will impact businesses that keep customer databases and send mass emails to clients and potential clients. Brian Bowman, a partner at Pitblado Law, is the national expert on this topic. He says the bill is intended to reduce the number of spam emails and messages (including text messages) we receive as Canadians. He says that for consumers, it will be a good thing. "It's a growing problem and legislators and parliamentarians are hearing from Canadians that they just want them to do something about spam." The problem is it doesn't have the power to regulate spam coming from outside the country. And that means that Canadian businesses will be spending time and resources complying with a law international competitors — who generate the vast majority of spam — can ignore. But the news isn't all bad. It's one form of legislation that businesses can actually use to market to their customer base. "Most businesses don't send out glossy brochures to their customers saying: Guess what? We pay our taxes! But you can do that with this law," Bowman says. "You can say: Here's how we're protecting your privacy and here are all the choices you have as a customer in terms of messaging. 10 MBiz November 2013 "Most local businesses know that the best way to grow your local network and customer base is a healthy relationship with your clients, and you don't get that with spam." Bowman offers these pointers for getting ahead of the curve — which is where you need to be when this law is proclaimed: • uild your consent strategy now: Once Bill C-28 is in force, B seeking consent from consumers to send them messages in order to comply with the legislation may in itself be seen as spam.Review customer databases and determine what type of consent you have received for the messages you send now or that you plan to send in the future. • ake sure all messages have notices and opt-out mechanisms M in place now. • ake sure contracts with service providers like email M marketers are refreshed to comply with the legislation. • e ready to respond to complaints and queries B from individuals. • arketing apps? Watch out for anti-spyware provisions. M Installing spyware on somebody's computer is already illegal, but the legislation has new disclosure rules for apps. For example, if you install an app on somebody's phone and information is going from their PDA into the cloud and vice versa, there are new disclosure obligations. "Businesses should be doing their homework and their due diligence now," Bowman says. "It's a beast of a law and it's not user-friendly."

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