Send your e-mail address to an online florist, and months later you may well get a marketing plug using-you guessed it-that same e-mail address. That's a troubling development for those concerned about personal information winding up in corporate databases. Canada has taken these concerns seriously, passing legislation to better protect the privacy rights of its citizens. The new federal law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, mandates rules businesses must follow in collecting and processing personal information; it requires, among other things, that companies obtain an individual's consent for specific uses of data.

Much of the attention to privacy issues over the past year has focused on the Internet, and the opportunity the Net affords business and government to collect extensive information about citizens. But the Canadian law applies to all data collection activities. That means banks and insurance companies collecting data in traditional ways, as well as the latest e-commerce trading site.