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Canadian Privacy Law v. E-Mail Harvesting

Posted by timothy on from the sticky-wicket dept.

sbowles writes "Canada's Privacy Commisioner has ruled that a business e-mail address is personal information protected under the federal privacy legislation (PIPEDA). Law professor Michael Geist (a leading e-commerce and privacy law expert) received an unsolicited request to buy seasons tickets from the local football team. His e-mail address had been harvested from a University website. The ruling indicated that 'You are allowed to collect and use publicly available information, but the use has to be directly related to the purpose for which the information appears in a directory or notice.'"

7 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Public Service Announcement by Hulkster · · Score: 5, Informative
    In case you are interested in letting the Ottawa Renegades (the football team mentioned in the article) know your thoughts, their Email address is feedback@ottawacfl.com and it is not only "publically available", but "directly related" since they advertise it as a way to contact 'em ... ;-)

    Support Celiac Disease Research

    1. Re:Public Service Announcement by shufler · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is hilarious as hell. I used to work for a company in Burlington, Ontario. We had nothing to do with The Renegades. Nothing.

      One day, we started receiving hundreds upon thousands of bounce messages, replies, and "TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST" messages. Turns out one of our (apparently mutual) service providers broke something on their end, and was sending all their mail to us (in fact, specifically to our Customer Sales Manager).

      There was over 600MB of mail, and I saved it to a CD somewhere. We tried for weeks to get in contact with the sales and tech people at the Renegades, and they never returned our phone calls. Clearly they don't really care about their customers.

  2. Re:Well... by mboverload · · Score: 5, Informative
    A little trollish, but I'll bite because I'm a sucker =)

    I should be able to post my email on the net without fear of some shameless spammer harvesting it. I finnaly posted my personal address on just a few forums and now I receive at least 50 spam a day. I never consented for it to be mailed to (use a hotmail account for web sign-ins) so only a damn bot could have gotten it.

  3. Home page by muditgarg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is the professors university home page , from where i guess the email id was harvested. Looks like the spammers should have read his biography and field of speciallization before having sent that mail :-) He even hosts this site regarding privacy issues

    I could have seen much further had it not been for the giants standing on my shoulders

  4. Re:Cana-"duh", does it again! by tuxette · · Score: 5, Informative
    This kind of anti-corporate behavior reflects poorly on the entire country, keeping jobs and money OUT.

    Au contraire; Canadian privacy laws have actually helped businesses, as individuals (customers, etc) are able to trust that their personal data is safe and proceed to do business. This was even discussed on /. a while back; I'll try to see if I can find the sources later on.

    --
    People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
  5. Of Interesting Note, Geist Gave Them a Chance Too by celest · · Score: 5, Informative

    Prof. Geist came and gave a presentation to my graduating class specifically on PIPEDA just after this had occured.

    He told us the whole scenario, and clearly pointed out that after receiving the first spam, he responded, specifically asking that they no longer use his email address for promotional matters.

    They ignored his request and sent him a second round of spam. That's when he filed the complaint against them. And won.

    It's not only a matter of spam. It's a clear-cut case of ignoring removal requests can be bad for you.

  6. Re:Isn't the purpose of a publically posted addres by InvalidError · · Score: 4, Informative

    In Canada, there are rules from the CRTC specifically banning ADAD (Auto-Dialing and Answering Devices) from being used for advertising and solicitation purposes including charities.

    To me, bulk-mailing is similar to such phone directory brute-forcing. It is intrusive, wasteful and annoying.

    The CRTC allows ADADs for appointment confirmations and public safety announcements, both legitimate, reasonable and pertinent reasons. This law simply brings these CRTC rules to eMail. For the record, even though CRTC stands for "Canadian Radio and Telecomunication Commitee", Internet is considered an "Information service" which is not (yet) under its jurisdiction.