Half of Belgian emails are spam

30 June 2004

BRUSSELS – More than half of all electronic messages received in Belgium are unsolicited emails, more commonly known as spam, it was reported Wednesday.

A study by Belgium’s biggest telecoms operator Belgacom showed that some 73 percent of all emails on its Skynet internet network were spam.

In 2004 alone, it expects 1 billion unsolicited emails to circulate on its network.

Somewhat more encouraging figures came from Telenet, which found that spam accounted for about half of all emails on its network.

Still, the proportion of spam climbs to 65 percent on weekends.

A working group set up by Belgacom, Internet service providers and other companies has been set up to study how to conquer the growing problem of spam.

Subject : Belgian news