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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. "
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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.
Won't VoIP be heavily government (FCC) regulated like other mediums such as radio and television?
http://codeus.info
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.
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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. :)
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
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.
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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. :)
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The VoIP spam will likely be IP based, in this case, they will either need my IP address or need a TON of bandwidth.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
"Press #### to talk to matt." And anyone who doesn't?
Albuquerque PC
There's a simple way of not leting phone calls interrupt dinner or mowing the lawn--don't answer it. When I first got married, my wife had that habit, if the phone was ringing, she ran to the phone to get it, even if she was busy. I always found that funny. If the phone is ringing and I'm doing something else, I don't answer it and let it go to voicemail. When I'm done, I'll check the VM and call back. Simple solution.
Well, I certainly know nothing about VoIP but couldn't there be a number of ways to screen the calls such as white listing or some sort of public/private key pairs or trusted certificates? These are all ways that one can deal with email spam, so could they be applicable for VoIP?
Who said Freedom was Fair?
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 think your point that graffiti is an artform has merit, but I fail to see how that relates to who owns the canvas. Artwork or not, I reserve the right to decide how to decorate my property. Public property is property owned jointly by the public in general, and it's up to the public to decide how to have it painted.
If Michelangelo had painted my ceiling without my permission, I'd wonder what the guy was trying to sell and blacklist his ISP in retaliation.