Three quarters of Swedish parliament's email is spam
During 2005 Sweden's members of parliament and civil servants in parliament received 23 million items of email classified as spam or junk mail.
Indeed, 75% of all the email sent to the parliamentary mail servers was spam.
"It's a massive problem for us," said Per Bengtsson, the administrative director for parliament's IT department, to Svenska Dagbladet.
Filters have been installed but bugs in the programme mean that serious email is also being filtered out.
Per Bengtsson is aware of the problem.
"The spam filter sometimes makes mistakes. It works on certain letter and word combinations. A common one, for example, is that it reacts to viagra, which often appears in spam.
That is not particularly useful for members of parliament dealing with health issues, who often receive perfectly legitimate enquiries about the drug from the public.
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Indeed, 75% of all the email sent to the parliamentary mail servers was spam.
"It's a massive problem for us," said Per Bengtsson, the administrative director for parliament's IT department, to Svenska Dagbladet.
Filters have been installed but bugs in the programme mean that serious email is also being filtered out.
Per Bengtsson is aware of the problem.
"The spam filter sometimes makes mistakes. It works on certain letter and word combinations. A common one, for example, is that it reacts to viagra, which often appears in spam.
That is not particularly useful for members of parliament dealing with health issues, who often receive perfectly legitimate enquiries about the drug from the public.
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