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CARLY WEEKS

From Friday's Globe and Mail

November 7, 2008 at 2:27 AM EST

Canada is the only G8 country that has failed to crack down on spam, the unsolicited e-mails that are increasingly traps for identity theft and fraud.

Security and privacy experts have been urging the federal government for years to take action, but nothing has been done and it's unclear if things will change.

Spam accounts for more than 80 per cent of all e-mail traffic in Canada, according to Industry Canada. But the problem isn't just that the messages are annoying. Spam has evolved from the crude Nigerian letter asking for money to sophisticated messages that appear to originate from the recipient's bank or credit-card company, and are designed to trick users into surrendering their personal information.

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