The spammer that Facebook won a landmark $873 million settlement against last month operated out of Canada, leading to criticism of the country’s lax anti-spam regulations. They did attempt to address the problem of spam in 2004 when they formed the National Task Force on Spam. The group was made up out of a mix of marketers, telecom companies and public interest groups. However, for reasons unknown the government ignored their recommendation to implement anti-spam regulations. Now, four years later, there are still no anti-spam regulations in place. From the Toronto Star:

          The Facebook case is just the latest illustration that government inaction has had an impact. Companies anxious to target Canadian-based spammers have been forced to turn to other countries to do the job, while international law enforcement investigations into criminal spam run the risk of stalling in Canada since authorities may lack the requisite investigatory powers.

Canada is the only G7 country with no anti-spam laws, and more and more spammers are taking advantage of that. They rank 5th worldwide as a source of email based spam, behind only Iran, Nigeria, Kenya, and Israel. It’s clear Canada must wake up and inact anti-spam legislation soon!