A while ago I posted an article stating that there was no way to report SMS spam online in Belgium. Guess what, I was wrong!
First, I was wondering if it was really illegal to send unsollicited commercial message by SMS in Belgium. I found this really nice flyer from the federal public service of economy (http://economie.fgov.be/fr/binaries/spamming_brochure_fr_tcm326-31741.pdf) explaining that the global definition of spam applies also to SMS or chat systems.
In the flyer, there was a link to a page to report such kind of behaviour to the authorities. The document being a bit old (2005), the link was outdated but our friend Google found me the new one: https://pointdecontact.belgique.be/meldpunt/en/welcome
On this official website, you can report SMS Spam (or other similar illegal activities) using the “New complain” button and the “SPAM from unidentified party” type of report.
I’m not sure it will be quite efficient to stop rapidly the Spam SMS from coming (most smartphone allow you to block senders for a while) but it will be the start of it. And if more and more people stat to report such behaviour, it will likely have an impact.
Notice you can also report spam or harassement coming from outside the country.
The scope is quite clear from the 1st page:
“Are you the victim of misleading practices, fraud or swindle? Or have your rights as a consumer or enterprise not been respected?
Then choose the scenario that matches your problem and follow the various steps to report your problem to the competent services.
You will always receive a reply in which we will try to provide an answer to your questions.
The competent services will analyse your report and may carry out an investigation. They do not take any action in your individual dispute, nor do they provide any information concerning the investigation. For your individual problem, we exclusively refer to the reply that will be sent to you”
Now you know what to do.