Canada’s anti-spam law took a glacial step towards being enacted when Industry Canada, after nearly two years of foot dragging, published their draft regulations and invited feedback from the public. Industry Canada, which is the government department responsible for …

The new year is upon us, and if you’ve been buried amidst mounds of wrapping paper, stuffed turkeys and egg-nog, it’s likely that you’ve welcomed the sense of normalcy that comes with the end of the holidays. But normalcy usually means returning to all the things we don’t particularly  relish doing, like getting up for work, paying bills, and fighting with our inboxes for dominance over our digital lives. It’s 2013 now, and the Mayan Apocalypse passed without so much as a sneeze out of the gods of the Yucatan Peninsula, but it’s a safe bet that some of you wish the prophecies had been true as the rush of spam email comes at you once again in a fast and furious fashion. Baby New Year hasn’t even had a chance to spit up on our shoulders, and already the feverish wave of after-holiday sales are clogging our email clients and giving them new reasons to be pissed off at the application developers who wrote them.

  Many people in Canada are upset that the country’s tough anti-spam law still has not been put into effect two years after it was passed. The blame lies with Industry Canada, the government department in charge of economic development. …

I don’t often like to prognosticate because like most people, I don’t want to be wrong. However in this case, the predictions I am making aren’t based in numbers and statistics; they are much less tangible.

Before we take a look at what is expected as we begin 2013, let’s take a quick look over some of the things we saw in 2012 as these are what I am basing my predictions on.

Fast food giant McDonalds has found itself in hot water with Australian anti-spam regulations due to a “send to friends” feature it had implemented on one of its websites. The feature allows visitors to share a friend’s email address with the site, which in turn sends a marketing email to them. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) took a very dim view of this and scolded the company, who responded by removing the feature. Because it was on their Happy Meal site, some say they are also guilty of marketing to children.

The ACMA says this is a direct violation of the country’s Spam Act, which requires all commercial entities to get consent before sending marketing emails, and the “send to a friend” feature did not get it from anyone whose emails were shared by friends.

One thing everyone at least thinks about at the start of the New Year is making one or more resolutions. New Year’s resolutions are commitments to change behaviours for the better, and to be things most people plan to stick with going forward. I’m not going to ask you to give up soda pop, or to exercise every day, but I am going to suggest thirteen New Year’s resolutions to help stop spam.

The Mayan apocalypse has passed without so much as a sneeze from the Mayan gods, and if you’ve breathed a sigh of relief and moved on and settled in for a quiet New Year, you may want to take this moment to gasp in horror.

Okay, it may not be all that bad, but you may want to get your game on so you can kick out spam-related threats in 2013. The annual report from security firm Sophos doesn’t give us a lot of comfort that spam will go away any time soon. In fact, 2012 had its share of nastiness, and nastiness, it seems, is the trend that will continue on into the fledgling year. The firm’s Security Threat Report 2013 has some invaluable reading for anyone in the business of protecting networks from the specter of douchiness that is the spammer community.

  2012 is just a memory now, but the last month of the year brought some big spam headlines. Botnets are still a big problem, India wins the crown for top spammer in the world, an insensitive reporter gets a nasty …

Facebook has announced a new service that some may find interesting and even useful, but  most will likely see it as a way to make money off spam. The popular social networking service has started to roll out a new …

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that spammers will always have an angle. Whether it’s to take advantage of natural disasters, human tragedies, or simple greed, spammers and phishers are going to come up with a new angle to ply their wares. While get rich quick schemes and the classic Nigerian money laundering attacks have been around for years, the impending United States “Fiscal Cliff” is likely to cause a surge in spam and phishing messages. The simple reason we keep seeing these sorts of messages is because they continue to work. People are gullible, and are inclined to believe things that promise to better their condition. It’s simple human nature. Attackers bank on this, and the Fiscal Cliff is another opportunity for them to take advantage of more victims. Here’s what you can expect to see.