Tips From The Federal Privacy Commissioner For Businesses Doing e-Marketing

The Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner has issued a Guidance Document with helpful tips on compliance with Canada's anti-spam legislation, or CASL, for businesses in their marketing activities. The Commissioner's Guidance addresses "e-marketing" which encompasses electronic marketing, including by way of emails and text messages. The Guidance document is focussed specifically on email marketing and on the issue of electronic address harvesting. The Commissioner defines electronic address harvesting as, "the use of a computer program to indiscriminately collect electronic addresses, such as email addresses".

The Guidance document provides comment on the due diligence that is necessary to avoid inadvertently harvesting email address or using harvested email addresses in an e-marketing campaign. Due diligence includes taking appropriate steps to ensure compliance with CASL obligations by a third party who has been contracted to do e-marketing for you or by