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Net Phone Customers Brace For 'VoIP Spam'
XaviorPenguin writes "If you think that Spam in your e-mail inbox is bad, wait until VoIP gets huge! According to a News.CNet.com story, your voice mail box on your Net Phones may be cluttered with ads for Viagra. '"The fear with VoIP spam is you will have an Internet address for your phone number, which means you can use the same tools you use for e-mail to generate traffic," said Tom Kershaw, a vice president at security specialist VeriSign. "That raises automation to scary degrees."'
If you think that is scary, you know the Do-Not-Call list that is out by the FTC, yeah, um, people with Net Phones may not be affected by this list and spammers/telemarketers may take this advantage for themselves. "
Does this mean I'll be getting calls from "barely legal" teens requesting my attendance in viewing them for the low price of $29.99 a month?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What, this is suprising? People using new communications methods to advetise to the public? What on Earth is the world coming to.
Oh well, I'll still with my text spamed mobile. And those phonecalls I get, asking me to upgrade my phone. Oh.
Well so far Vonage is great.
Ive been a subscriber for 3 years and have not recived a single sales call.
I belive I have recived about 10 calls that got the wrong number.
Well, you at least get their IP address in your logs, unlike email spam.
So you can use that to do... well, nothing, unless you're the RIAA
If only CAN-SPAM were 1/10th as effective as the do-not-call list. It's strange: I didn't sign up for the do-not-call list, but the number of telemarkters calling has still declined rather sharply. On the other hand, spammers, in the face of legislation, have apparently decided it would be better to send more spam than ever before.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Well, same possibilities for spamming, means same possibilities for Spamfilters. I know, it's only a cold comfort ;).
My Blog: "sum it up - News, emotions and science"
hmm, maybe we can get the spammers to play a song in the background during their spam messages...then RIAA will be all over them!
Moo.
Won't VoIP be heavily government (FCC) regulated like other mediums such as radio and television?
http://codeus.info
I'm not sure if I'm an exception to the case, but I never get any spam. If I get a voip address, I'll just use the same methods I do now. Create a dummy account for signups, be careful how I post my address on the internet, etc.
Here's the wide open hole in VoIP phone service:
Every VoIP phone that has a real-world phone number also has an SIP address that can be used to send calls to it as well... If those addresses get captured and traded around like e-mail addresses, then all a tele-spammer would need is the bandwidth and they're all set to call you with a spam-like ad.
And the Do Not Call Registry law doesn't even apply because it registers phone numbers, not SIP addresses. So that and any other telephone-based law isn't going to work here.
If you think that is scary, you know the Do-Not-Call list that is out by the FTC
The FCC cannot regulate the entire world - just the US.
Spammers can operate from other countries without worrying about FCC's do-not-call lists (or using compromised boxes for that matter).
My pics.
None of this would happen if everybody just went out and bought herbal viagra and penis enlargement kits. If we all bought some then they wouldn't need to spam us so much.
So buy! Buy! Buy!!
We could use the /. effect against them!
I can't wait to find out how Nigerians pronounce "i HaVe A gReAt BuSiNeSs PrOpOsAl FoR U"
If you look at CNET's coverage of VoIP on their web site, you'll notice a major trend: FUD.
With that in mind, I take this with a grain of salt. I have Vonage and I disabled my voicemail the first day I got it. Why? I own an answering machine which my wife is somewhat attached to and to be honest, so am I.
If you don't like a function, just turn it off!
df
[sig]darkfus[/sig]
..how to integrate those stupid computer generated sales calls with spam with VOIP :(
If VOIP is not treated as a phone service with all the fees does that mean that its ok to use automated sales calls here if its a VOIP # instead of POTS ? (not ok in WA on POTS currently)
yikes
I don't understand why the "do not call list" does not apply to this technology. Can anyone explain, please? I mean, from a legal pov.
1011010110 1101011010 1101101011 0110101101 0110110101
For some reason I think your wife will disagree...
You must be new here.
You should be aware of the following.
In conclusion, you are not to trust anything from Ziff-Davis. Please use Google News to find more reputable news sources.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
But VoIP systems are perfect counterparts to address books. My mobile phone includes the "Call Filter" app (PalmOS), which directs calls to different coded rings (eventually a sample of the caller saying their name), or voicemail. In a just country, the FTC would require unsolicited commercial messages, in any medium, to include a "Reply-To:" data field, registered in an online database. Fraud/spoofing/omission would be subject to a $20 fine, *per message*, split between the caller and the government as damages/fines.
--
make install -not war
I call from a "non-existent" phone number (a number I have which I simply always route to BUSY). That's the number sales droids get in stores, is on my checks, etc. The same number either line shows for CID (but only one line can do ANI as this #).
Private callers learn to dial their appropriate * code -- otherwise they go do the Boulder, CO time clock.
Out-Of-Area callers, 1-000, 1-700 and other assorted numbers go to the US Naval Observatory time clock.
My phone almost never rings with sales calls. Almost. You'll always get that cold caller (and VoIP makes doing this cheap). There's always been a cheap way though and those that DO get through are treated, well, rudely. It's "my" phone line.
Of course I'm the one that gave up on POTS now decades ago -- did similar BUSY, CID type "tricks" with ISDN forever with the added benefit (like VoIP) that "data lines" are automatically unpublished _and_ unlisted. As usual -- the first hint that I get that my "phone company" is selling my number and they lose a customer.
VoIP is a doubled edged sword for the sales attempts IMHO.
Look at it this way more people are likely to end up with VoIP phones in the future than are likely to really bother with E-mail. When John Doe Consumer starts getting racy, obscene and highly offensive voice mails inviting him to "gain 4 inches now" or "view barely legal teens" every day he's going to care a lot.
And yes spammers will try to set up operations overseas but many of the countries that tolerate the spammers now have less freedoms in general and sexual mores are more government enforced. They can ignore millions of porn E-mail spam easily, but when they have their citizens getting racy voice mail (even if they can't understand the words I'm sure the spammers will leave nothing to the imagination in tonal deliverance) or they end up with egg on their face for tolerating people sending things through them that would be illegal for their citizens they'll end up cutting off the easy access for spammers.
Frankly the only thing that'll end the reign of terror spammers have on the net at large today will be them shooting themselves in the foot by going too far. I can't wait for it to happen, but until then they can send all they want to my spam trap addresses, my Baysian filters love to be fed. :)
we need to reanimate George Peppard. Second, we need some no non-sense delta force guys who are sick and tired of being offered brest and penis enhancement through their e-mail. Then we'll need BA's van. Next, a small video production crew. Then we can enjoy the webcast vicious slayings of spammers all over the globe, complete with dramatic and requiset "shakey cam."
We will pay for the operation with discrete and sensible banner ads for Black Talon ammunition, Baretta, Colt, and Remmington arms, find a person services, discount night vision gear, and subscription offers for guns and ammo, military surplus auctions, and of course the brand placement in each episode.
Far from being intractable, I think such an approach would solve the whole unsolicited bulk email problem very quickly.
-5 Offtopic, -5 shamelessly advertising your stupid business you dumbass, +0 anything else
The near zero cost of communication is the root cause of spam (and the reason the net is the best of places and worst of places). Until the recipient, who bears the high labor cost of coping with spam, can levy a charge on the sender, who bears near zero cost for mass-produced messages, spam will persist and proliferate.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Existing VoIP services are through proprietary protocols controlled by the host companies (Vonage, Skype, etc...). Although the connections are made IP-to-IP, these clients are typically only built to accept connections that have been verified through the host network first. Although there have been problems with, for instance, instant message spam in the past, it is quite rare now (in my experience). Forging a message on a private network is much harder than on a public one.
-Joe
Compared to what other providers of similar services?
When I started receiving junk e-mail around 1995, I had been using e-mail for some ten years already. My great experience of a spam-free past did absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of junk I received later; it rather became more annoying to me in comparison.
Note that the article warns about future rather than past or present advertising. Your experience may be comforting to you, but it doesn't sound very relevant.
A lot of the cheaper plans offered by VoIP companies, like cell phones, have a certain number of minutes you have per month. Some of the companies, foolishly, make you listen to an entire voicemail message before deleting it (in the cell phone world Cingular does this too), now if you have even 5% or 10% the amount of voicemail spam that you do email spam and you're forced to listen to entire messages before deletion this is going to take up a pretty significant chunk of your minutes... that's bad bad news.
sig.
If the VoIP world goes the way of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) then everyone will need to use a service provider to assist in routing calls outside of a business network. That provider will assign a charge, albeit a small one, to each call. Unlike sending spam email virtually free of charge, making 100,000 VoIP spam calls will cost a tidy sum of money - far beyond the purses of any 2-bit spammer!
Secondly, in a SIP environment, any call needs to go via a SIP registration server so that the caller is able to get information on what devices and messaging services the called party has available as well as obtaining the called party's IP address (remembering of course that if the called party is mobile, the IP address he or she is registered to is rapidly changing anyway!) I have no doubt that it's a relatively simple task to provide some connection blocking at the SIP server so that it's possible to create a blacklist of callers that will never get a connection.
Sure, I've no doubt that telemarketers will make use of VoIP but while both telemarketers and spammers should burn in hell, telemarketers target specific individuals (based on information they have on that individual that makes them believe they can sell something to him or her) and therefore generate far less junk traffic than spammers.
Personally, this is just FUD spread by a bunch of "think-they-know-it-all" security cowboys out to make a fast buck.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I wonder if this will force the voice recognition software industry to finally deliver on it's promises of functional voice recognition to combat this type of spam. :)
sig.
I own an answering machine which my wife is somewhat attached to and to be honest, so am I.
Answering machine bondage, that's a new one. How do you attach the handcuffs ?
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Mfourkthree yzerozeror wzeromfourn hfourppy, gthreet vonefourgrfour! Onet Mfourkthrees yzerour pthreenones grzerow!
sig.
Simply force an unknown caller to enter a random number on the keypad before being connected. Callers on your friends list need not endure this.
I have a vonage account, and always check my voicemail via the website. It's an extra step, but it doesn't cost me any minutes...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
At least an inbox full of VM's doesnt interrupt your dinner, or make you come running in from mowing the lawn to be told your windows could be more energy efficient.
OTOH, Unsolicited anything is the suck. Hey Seller-of-Things, guess what, I have PLENTY of ways to get in touch with you if I want something. Thanks.
"Sig free in '03!"
Depends on if you count your mom's... of course, as nice I usually try to be... you did set yourself up for that one.
The good old telephone is looking better and better!
:) or am I? :(
At what point did we pass the "Technology is helpful" stage and enter the "Technology attacks you at every turn" stage?
Now has never been a better time to just luddite out and reject all technology post new millenium! Just joking...
Not sure about regular calls but for voice mails, since an ivr type service is picking up, it could easily prompt the person to type in a combination of numbers to leave a message something a broadcast program can't easily figure out.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
This is actually a case where a proprietary and closed network like Skype has an advantage.
Sounds like your are a victim of Vogon poetry spam!!!!!
spammers/telemarketers may take this advantage for themselves.
May?
Technoli
FYI: On my Cingular phone, 7 is the erase button after a message, but if you push 7-7 during a message it will stop playback and erase it. Don't know if it works on all phones/plans or just mine.
Since the line is voice only, wouldn't this technically be the same as using an analogue autodialer and therefore be illegal?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
ummm, no he didn't. Mom's typically don't have dicks.
Maybe yours is an exception, I dunno.
I agree with you about the checkbook thing though... jesus christ i'm broke.
"but many of the countries that tolerate the spammers now have less freedoms in general and sexual mores are more government enforced."
You say that like it's a good thing...
I have Cingular, and you can hit '3' during a voicemail message to delete it.
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
I use it as a journal, and a sort of review system (pales in comparison to anything that supports multiple pages or inline graphics, though).
In fact, I have reviews of two printers in there already.
As you can see in my sig, I also use it as a personal Ask Slashdot, seeing as I almost never get stories accepted, because mine are usually highly specific, and won't appeal to a general audience.
"Press #### to talk to matt." And anyone who doesn't?
Albuquerque PC
-5 liar, -5 annoying, give it up already
No, actually... AOL for Kids tends to block those things. I have to wait for links in spam, but I digress...
;)
Oh, wait... better reply: "does my cat count?"
Even better answer... I saw your mom's. I assume that counts.
Ah, but this will make it much easier to do a "sender permitted from" type of thing (call it caller permitted from) with packet filters.
If your friend(s) don't have static IPs, they can use one of the free DNS-alike services to let your filter know what their current (dynamic) IP address is.
Then your filter blocks every IP except the ones you know you want.
Spam is in the same class of social irritants as grafitti. (il mio Italiano no esta bonno).
It is someone hijacking a lightly guarded public place for their own benefit. The physical area that gets defaced by grafitti is too low in value to hire a full-time guard to prevent its defacement. The shitperson can deface the area quickly with paint and not get caught, providing a free advertising medium for himself and his (always a male) message.
Public law enforcement officers say that the faster an area that has been defaced by grafitti is cleared of the defacement, the less likely it is to be re-vandalized. I'm not sure if this applies to spam as well. However I do believe that spam in the same social catagory as grafitti.
Spammers, like grafitti vandals, are assholes. To accept as legitimate advertisers is only to ask to deluged with endless amounts of worthless spam. The legal arguments that are used against vandals should be refined and tested in court against spammers.
And, yes, grafitti vandals are assholes too. They aren't artists. They have the ability to create art but they don't. They foul public places. People who claim that grafitti vandals are artists are assholes too. So are the people who defend spammers as 'new media' advertisers.
Every time I see that acronym, I keep thinking of this cartoon. Having never used VoIP (as far as I know), I prefer the second usage of the term :)
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
where is the equivlent relay for this?
where is the bandwidth coming from?
spam works because of the insecurity aspects of smtp. voip on the other hand (as presented by the article via 'net phone' has costs associated with it)
i dont see massive vonage asterisk boxes 'open' that are going to allow some spamer to directly send endless 'barely legal' or 'viagra' commercials to my vonage voice mail box.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
It may well force them to try harder, but there are still a couple of issues.
For starters, I don't know of any way to "force" a difficult problem. You either figure out how to solve it, or you don't. It is a fallacy to believe that an extra million dollars worth of research necessarily brings us one lick closer to a cure for cancer, for instance.
Then there's the issue that snake oil salesmen never have any intention on delivering functionality in the first place. If the product does not actually perform as advertised your money will be cheerfully spent.
KFG
This is called whitelisting and that doesn't work for companies (for example) for obvious reasons.
Or the nice girl you gave your number to that said "don't call me, I'll call you" and didn't give her number.
But you could easily use a blacklist. My firewall has a redirect command. It would be cool to forward spammers to the FTC-complaints hotline.
Privacy is terrorism.
Make your woman happy, get viagra! It Makes your penis grow!
My phone and everyone I know has been armed with an answering machine for at least 10 years and we never answer it - we only leave messages - no two way conversations.
Oh well, what the hell...
I'm sure it will make the kookboi posts about SPEWS and other lists seem like nothing.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Actually, I'm currently researching 2nd-hand (maybe even new) small PBXs & associated phones. If you burn an extension for your front, rear, & garage door remote controls, you're still left with five valid internal lines to which you can connect a phone. You also get paging, instead of yelling throughout the house.
Once you have that, you just make sure you assign 4-digit extensions and don't mention what they are on your outgoing message (also disable the 0 for general mailbox option). Voila - anyone who doesn't know a valid extension can't get through. I doubt this will be common enough anytime soon that you'll get wardialing telemarketers trying all the possible 2-5 digit extensions in hopes of a hit.
I'm sure once VoIP is even more common, everybody and his brother will be putting out a package for your PC to do the same thing.
I say we just bring back public stonings.
Speak before you think
Works on my plan too. I just push 3 whenever and the message is nuked. It gets used. A lot.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I live in France but not speaking French I answer the phone in English - works almost every time!
I figure that it could work in reverse in other countries, answer in French in the US and that'll totally confuse any spa^^^telemarketeer.
Of course there could be the odd person who speaks French in which case answering in Dutch will work even better.
Goed middag, hoe gaat het?
But of course if all else fails you can totally confuse them (and get extra geek points) if you speak to them in Klingon:
SoH DichDaq Hegh!
If they're still playing after a few minutes, then the call is serious -- or they're hooked.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Existing VoIP services are through proprietary protocols controlled by the host companies"
Last I knew, Skype was one of the few that fit that description.
Vonage uses SIP (RFC3261 et al) and RTP (RFC2833), as do most VoIP providers.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
I have a quick question, an answer to that question, and a suggestion.
Q. Why do people spam?
A. They Make money off of it.
Suggestion: With how open all our modes of communication are, and closing them being such a bad thing to do, perhaps our money would be better spent sending the message across to people that they should not be responding to this spam. Never, ever respond to a credit card offer in the mail. Never, ever respond to any ad of any kind sent to your email. Never follow the links.
It is my best hope that if literally no one (less than a one in a million response rate, hopefully less than one in a hundred million) responds to the spams, they will soon come to an end, although every so often someone will try again they will quickly be put out of business. There is no other way to stop spammers without having to break rules along the way IMHO. If anyone else has a suggestion I am open to it, but I really think the solution relies in our own personal responsibility.
None of this would happen if everybody just went out and bought
Or, say, if everybody responded without buying -- you know, visit that nice little website they linked in their message (say, 2,000,000 times a day). Or go ahead, call the number they left. String the salesman out for 20-30 minutes.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
on cell phones in japan. Spam via text messaging is rampant. Spammers will call your phone to get their phone number on your caller id and then charge you astronomical calling fees once you call back. i've had a couple of friends receive mafia style "call me or i'll kill you" messages on their voice mail to tempt people to call them back and again, charge astronimical fees. ok so not VoIP but it's phone spam related
you do know that funny mods dont add to your karma but flamebait and offtopic to, right?
go check your math dumbass
foolishly, make you listen to an entire voicemail message before deleting it (in the cell phone world Cingular does this too),
Market forces tend to weed out these pratices. ATT had a consumer support problem. With number portability, they got the message something needed to change. When phone SPAM becomes too much and Cingular fails to keep consumers when the contract expires, then they will either change or fold. I love a free market!
The truth shall set you free!
Yup. Spam on mail. Spam on VoIP. Spam on cell phone. EVIL STANDS EVERYWHERE!!!
There are several reasons this is not a concern of mine.
One, even if your provider uses sip, you don't need to take sip calls from the internet. Granted, it is cheaper for the provider for "in network" calls.
Two, if you did get a message, how effective is it going to be. Are you home? Do you even listen if you are, instead of hanging up.
Three, if this was effective, people would already be doing it to your regular POTS line now.
I would say some FUD. It's different than email. Or even snail mail spam.
I should say, I work for a VoIP company..I admin some mail servers even. 200k messages a day servers...f*ck spammers- ok
Cheers,
Sol
Just allow the people on your contact list the ability to phone you.
If VOIP can now be tapped, then they should at enforce the do not call list as well. Give us some good with the bad!
Are there any free VoIP software that uses free open protocols?
It seems the Internet was MADE for spam.......
"In America, you can always find a party. In Russia, party always finds you."
It seems the Internet was MADE for Spam.......
"In America, you can always find a party. In Russia, party always finds you."
c'mon, how many people really check these things? i wait until i have 15 or so on my cellphone (i have vonage too), and most of the messaging on there i consider spam, and it's left by friends, clients and a crazy female geek loving girl. the girl is the only non-spam message on there ;) i think that people leave messages on my v-mail just to hear themselves speak!
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
They pay for their internet already, why pay extra to send email?
Instead, delete your email spam/malware automatically. I do with a fast, effective freeware, POP3 email checker I wrote called CF13-POP3(TM). To effectively eradicate all email spam/malware, consider using my shareware all-in-one mailserver program at the above URL.
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
SpamByte code: 7
(see http://www.cf13.com/game-over-spammers.htm )
All email containing unwanted content will be summarily deleted or reported as spam.
Actually, I'm currently researching 2nd-hand (maybe even new) small PBXs & associated phones.
Check out Asterisk - very configurable and you can either use IP phones or soft-phones, either way you're using either your existing cat-5 wiring or 802.11.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It is August, 2004 as of this writing. Two years later, spammers have made his approach to filtering email spam almost worthless. As a replacement, I offer the following:
SpamByte: Game Over Spammers/Computer Crackers...
Delete your email spam/malware automatically. I do
While you are at it....
How to secure your system against spam/malware...
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
SpamByte code: 7
(see http://www.cf13.com/game-over-spammers.htm )
All email containing unwanted content will be summarily deleted or reported as spam.
Not only completely anonymous. I recently discovered an article about how easy it is to spoof Caller ID on VoIP - that means, you select the number you want to appear as Caller ID! I don't remember its url, but some googling will reveal quite a lot.
Of course, many providers won't accept this - they compare your real number with what you send as CID before routing the call, but spammers will always find one with no restrictions.
It's quite simple....
Leave your phone line unplugged unless your are making a phone call or online with your computer.
If someone needs to call you, they can email you their phone number (if needed), a brief message, and the best time to return their call and you can call them back.
In this manner, you are 'invisible' to the telemarketers and spammers/computer crackers.
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
SpamByte code: 7
(see http://www.cf13.com/game-over-spammers.htm )
All email containing unwanted content will be summarily deleted or reported as spam.
More like, spam was MADE to maliciously (or at least annoyingly) exploit the good features of the Internet...
Doesnt the voicemail pick up regardless of whether or not the phone is pugged in or not? I was under the impression voice mail is housed at a central location.
Exactly I have a Wifi VOIP Handset that connects to my phone switch at work. All behind my firewall, bring on the spam if you dare.
. pdf PDF
BTW I highly reccomend it as the best cordless phone I've ever used. Excellent battery and reception (add a cisco AP and you are golden)
http://www1.avaya.com/enterprise/brochures/lb1875
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
Well this is interesting.
Looks like it's time for homes to have small computers which runs a small voip routing server to handle calls of various natures:
Sounds like an open source project to me.
Also a great way to gather the numbers of known spammers and distribute a list of said numbers/ip addresses for blocking.
The phone companies, as noted in the artcle, thinking that it isn't a big deal is basically shrugging responsibility for something which they should take more seriously. Given the nature of phone spam, email spam, and phone sms/messaging spam, to think that voip spam is a low priority target is pretty slipshod.
*shrugs* Looks like voip filtering will just be an extension to the massive spam filtering already being done. Wish I could send a bill to the spammers for the extra work they are basically forcing me to do. :(
Winged Power Photography
Companies like Vonage should set up a system to combat this problem before it even becomes one. I am not quite sure how exactly it works but I would imagine that voice messages get delivered through a server owned by the VOIP provider. All that is necessary to prevent others from leaving messages or calling you is a simple D/H signature put on the messages by a reputable phone company or service provider. The messages or calls without this signature get thrown into the celestial bit bucket by your VOIP router. Lets nip this one in the but before it becomes the problem. Shouldn't be to difficult given that you are paying for a service that is controlled by your service provider.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
That is if you have the voicemail service from the phone company (which costs additional money). The telemarketers can spam that as well. With my method, it is virtually impossible to be bothered by telemarketers/spammers/computer crackers.
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
SpamByte code: 7
(see http://www.cf13.com/game-over-spammers.htm )
All email containing unwanted content will be summarily deleted or reported as spam.
Then, whenever I dial a wrong number, it can automatically connect me to someone trying to sell me long distance service, debt consolidation, or a newspaper subsription.
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
yes there are.
Well, think of it this way... If it were this easy to bypass the security on the network, then nobody would be paying for calls. The IP address does not let you deliver a message to the phone, period. There is going to be a secure session between the phone and the provide, plain and simple. Vonage doesn't want you to make a call without going through their servers, because then they cannot bill you. They do not wnat you receiving a call without going through their servers, because they cannot bill you. Granted, it is unlimited calls per month, but if you don't pay, they are able to shut down your service. The most efficient way of doing this is to have the device on your network open a secure channel, and to use only the secure channel. This is pure paranoia unless there is a security hole, and one would hope that the VoIP companies would have the capability to patch the software running the phone so that they could replace it when/if a hole is found, since it directly impacts their ability to charge for the service. Getting a call into the voice mail would require hacking their service. Even if there were gateways between providers to route over internet, those would use some form of mutual authentication. This article is pure and total FUD.
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.
"trying all the possible 2-5 digit extensions in hopes of a hit"
Further, even if it did become common enough to support this, brute force attempts are relatively easy to recognize. If a non-whitelisted IP tries to connect more than 5 times (adjust number as necessary), don't let it connect for 10 minutes. If it repeats, blacklist it. This would allow direct IP/IP connections without requiring the network authentication (e.g. Vonage).
You people are confusing me and each other. The Federal Communications Commission is very different from the Federal Trade Commission.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.