Telcom Italia Mobile has been accused of double standards after taking anti-spam action against Vodafone. TIM began blocking SMS messages from Vodafone customers last week after identifying Vodafone as the source of numerous text message spam messages sent to its subscribers.

But veteran spam fighter Steve Linford, of the Spamhaus Project, says TIM is being hypocritical. TIM is owned by Telecom Italia S.p.A. which also runs interbusiness.it, a frequent source of complaints to Spamhaus.

Linford said: "interbusiness.it is Europe's spammiest ISP and one which we, as well as Italy's other main networks and many US networks, consider to be Europe's worst spam problem."

The ISP records an impressive ninth place in Spamhaus's "Top 10 World Worst Spam ISPs" for May 2004 (chart published at the bottom of our home page, www.spamhaus.org). "They're the only European ISP to ever make our chart. In fact it has such a bad spam reputation that there's even a blacklist just for it: interbusiness.blackholes.us," Linford said.

"Basically, Vodafone users are probably receiving inordinately far more spam from interbusiness.it, AKA Telecom Italia S.p.A., than the other way round. ®

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