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Canadian Privacy Law v. E-Mail Harvesting
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.'"
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No, it's to have pertinent sent to. My email address appears above this post -- if you want to discuss it with me, fine, if you want to attempt to sell me V1AGRA, then kindly fuck off.
My phone number's in the book, that doesn't mean I want you to ring me and see if I'm interested in double glazing.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Too bad canadian law only applies in Canada...
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.
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
Canada becomes a more appealing place to move to. The fact there is an actual government post to protect citizens' privacy... it boggles my American mind. Someone actually tries to protect privacy, and they work for the government?
I think this makes an excellent assertion that placing an email in a specific location should limit it to the purpose it was placed there for. If I own a business and provide customers and interested parties with contact info on the company webpage, that address should not be spammed with penis growth ads and I should be legally entitled to damages for having to install spam filters and pay admins to further maintain them.
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
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...
No, because the business is giving you the e-mail address, it is still their property. They cannot monitor you personal (home) e-mail at your home, but it is debatable as to whether or not the can monitor it if you check your home e-mail at work (provision of bandwidth purchased by company making it their e-mail because you used their bandwidth). when in doubt, leave home stuff at home, don't use work address for personal e-mail...
I mean it's all well and good to have LAWS that Protect PEOPLE, but that's lesbo potsmoking terrorist homosexual communism. And that's what we're fighting against, isn't it people? Or do you HATE freedomlibertylibertyfreedomfreedom and Jesus?
Now get in line and leave your luggage on the platform. You're only being relocated to the east.
And we'd like to keep it that way. But with the US making laws that say any of our data passing through a US company is subject to the conditions of PATRIOT act.
I'd like to see India or some other location which routinely handles US data decree those US citizens whose data passes through are subjected to local laws. That kind of extra-teritorial grab bugs me.
Here's hoping we keep a sane climate on privacy here in Canada and the rest of the world.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.