Based on a study conducted by Radicati Research Group Inc., spam is estimated to cost around $20.5 billion in lost productivity. Other studies also suggest that spam is not slowing down any time soon. It is estimated that overtime, spam will continue to rise and become more prevalent. While there are advanced solutions to filtering and providing protection from spam, there’s a need for more from a legislative perspective.
Some of you may wonder why there hasn’t been any legislation to help eliminate this spam problem once and for all.
Well it turns out that on July 1, 2014 Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) came into effect, which is the toughest anti-spam law in the world. Since this law was enacted the CRTC has received over 1000 complaints and investigators are carefully analyzing requests to see if spammers have violated the law. Personally, I don’t think that CASL will be effective for the following reasons:
- I consider it just another way of misusing tax payer dollars.
- It’s a lengthy process and not a lot of people will opt for it
- Many businesses will be impacted, which will increase the unemployment rate. Honestly, as bad as it sounds the spam industry actually helps with the economy. Think about how many anti-spam companies out there are helping others reach out to consumers, how many anti-spam companies are working day and night developing software and different mechanisms to fight spam and protect users, how many employees are held from unemployment or preventing them from getting side tracked or becoming spammers. Odd isn’t it? These two domains are helping the economy thrive and if the government really cares it should invest money in educating people on what to do and what not to do. If someone deliberately and naively clicks on a link, divulges his/her personal information, then why should I blame spammers.
- My last point, is that even though this tough spam legislation exists there will always be tweaks and exits like any other law. Spammers will always find ways to lose their trace and tax payers will have to suffer the consequences.
As I mentioned above, spam is still and will continue to be more prevalent overtime. I stumbled on a graph from a Cisco blog article and it points out that as of March 2014 spam has surpassed 200 billion messages per month, which is double the average. The article also mentioned that other organizations are showing the same trend.
Discussion
What’s your stance on Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)? Let us know.
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