Most marketers are at the very least, vaguely aware of the US regulations regarding SPAM – the CAN-Spam act – passed several years ago. Now the Canadian government is looking to beef up and update our laws regarding SPAM of all sorts, including SMS spam.
The proposed Bill C-27 or the Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA) is intended to address most Internet-related consumer evils. With spyware, phishing and botnets abounding on the web, regardless of which side you come down on, it is clear that current laws were insufficient and out-dated.
No legislation will provide 100% elimination of spam. So what are the latest proposed changes going to add to what we already do to comply with CAN-Spam? Here are the broad strokes.
- Advanced permission is required. You MUST have a pre-existing business relationship in the prior 18 months.
- Unsubscribe links must stay active for 60 days.
- Unsubscribe requests must be honoured within 10 days
- Cannot harvest email addresses without consent or alter the transmission information (anti-phishing protection)
- Tougher requirements on false or misleading representations
- Extremely tough penalties are included – up to 14 years in jail for #5.
- Individuals have the right to sue spammers
- Permission is required for SMS messages
- Very stiff penalties for corporations AND individuals – up to $10 million for corporations and $1 million for individuals.
As Dr. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa states, there will be an interesting battle as the bill continues to move through the political process. Marketers will be faced with having to deal with very stiff regulations that will undoubtedly increase costs – at least initially. While consumer groups will most likely be pleased with the reform.
Hidden costs of SPAM
Researchers at Ferris Research have estimated that the “cost” of SPAM around the world is now teetering around $130 BILLION for 2009 - $42 billion in the US alone. Yes, that billion with a capital B. Here are a few mind-blowing statistics from Ferris:
• Estimated number of non-spam email messages sent worldwide each day 2006: 25 billion
• % of email messages sent daily that are spam messages: > 75%
• Typical # Internet emails sent and received by a business user: 600 per week
• Cost of a user deleting a spam message: $0.04
• Cost of a user retrieving a bona fide message erroneously deleted as spam (”false positive”): $3.50
We have spam filters to take care of this you say. True. And while some are more effective than others, ALL have weaknesses. So we’re left manually sifting through all the false negatives and search for those LOST false positives on our own. Think of your personal email INBOX and now consider what it might be like for a large corporation’s help desks and customer service centers. At an estimated cost of $3.50 per retrieving a lost good email falsely filtered as spam, you can see how quickly the tally mounts.
Financial costs to business and consumer protection surely out-weigh a marketers need to access consumers by un-necessary means. The bill just passed second reading in the House of Commons means that we marketers need to be prepared for the consequences now. We need to unleash ourselves, or ISP and consumers from the grip of spam.
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