It’s Canada Day 2014 and most Canadians have probably noticed their email inboxes filling up with requests to confirm their subscriptions to several mailing lists.
This is of course because the new anti-spam legislation comes in effect today, restricting the sending of unsolicited emails to Canadians.
I’ve personally taken advantage of several offers to confirm my subscriptions in exchange for contest entries. But I have also used the opportunity to unsubscribe to the mailings lists I no longer read regularly and recommend that you do so as well, as soon as possible.
You should note that this legislation is not limited to commercial email but extends to “malware, spyware, address harvesting, and false or misleading representations involving the use of any means of telecommunications, short message services (SMS), social networking, websites, URLs and other locators, applications, blogs, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and any other current or future Internet and wireless telecommunication threats prohibited by Canada’s anti-spam legislation.”
You can also help stop some of this activity by securing your Wi-fi with a password and by updating your antivirus & firewall software regularly.