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By Mark Graham, 21 May 2001 13:10

NEWS A silicon.com reader has expressed her concern after Vodafone told her it was not in its financial interests to block a string of nuisance calls and text messages she was receiving on her phone. A Vodafone operator told her she would have to take the matter to the police because it is not in the company's economic interests to have a blocking policy. A spokesman for Vodafone has confirmed that individuals wishing to escape harassment of this kind must get a reference number from the police to prove there is a genuine nuisance. Only when the nuisance call is verified will Vodafone take the step of issuing the user a new number - otherwise it will cost the customer £60 plus VAT to get it changed. The spokesman said: "The obvious advantage of a mobile is you can see the number on the screen as it comes up, so you can choose whether to accept the call." However, when directly asked whether money was the motivation for Vodafone's reluctance to protect its customers, the spokesman was unable to comment. Vodafone is not alone in taking this stand: One2One also requires victims of nuisance calls to first obtain a police reference. But the other operators are more proactive. Orange and BT Cellnet both have in-house malicious call bureaus, which assess the severity of the calls to determine whether to take further action. Virgin also has an in-house corporate security team to evaluate each individual case and gauge the degree of danger posed by each individual nuisance caller. All operators are bound by the need for a police request to block a nuisance call from a rival's network. Meanwhile, in other news the UK police yesterday announced an initiative to bombard stolen mobile phones with text messages to annoy the thieves into turning them in. A similar scheme in the Netherlands led to a 57 per cent drop in phone theft.