Source: www.voip-news.com

No one likes spam. Not email users, not Skype users, and not any other VoIP customers. It’s the unsolicited junk mail of the internet that serves to create more waste and headaches. But, the annoyance could be mitigated soon. The Internet Engineering Task Force is going to be looking at ways to control VoIP spam, also known as spit, over the next six to 12 months.

According to Heise Online:

 At the 71st meeting of the IETF in Philadelphia the proponents of a first draft architecture had a tough time with their proposal because reliable figures are not yet available for the current threat to internet telephony. However in the end, a majority of the developers did approve the setting up of a “reconnaissance group”, tasked with documenting potential threat scenarios and possible countermeasures. A previous proposal for a regular IETF working group on countermeasures to VoIP spam had failed.

Jon Peterson, one of the leaders in the domain of real-time applications and infrastructure (RAI), said there was no evidence at the present time that a “spit” problem existed. In his opinion it was still, at best, theoretical. A representative of the NEC Lab in Heidelberg, on the other hand, said that work on possible solutions to “spit” had already been going on there for three years. At present, he said, the “spit” figures were still small, but “spit” was expected to become a serious problem as internet telephony became more widespread.

Read more here.

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

First the Mail system came and then the telephone. In both these cases some people found out that they were very good advertising mediums. So our mail boxes started to get filled up with unwanted mail, catalog’s, phony checks, Lottery offers, etc. Our phones stared ringing evenings and weekends with people trying to sell you all sort of things, surveys, and anything else anyone could think of!
I just have a Dustbin, thrash can next to my Mail Box, to control my Mail SPAM. I do it not the Post office.
Telephone was a bit different, I used to rudely hang up those calls, ask for money from surveyors to answer their questions and then came the Caller ID and I put that to immediate use. Now I get almost zero spam calls on my pots line. I declare my phone number when ever I call some one and therefor only numbers that are identifiable could call me. So I can see who is calling before I answer. If do not know the number I do not answer and they can leave a message. All my close connections have a code that they punch in if they do not have Caller ID enabled to call me, specially to the people from other countries need it.
I also have two VoIP lines from Providers as well two IP PBXs which are my own. I am yet to get a spam call on either!, yet.

Then came Email, the ability to send email to anyone with email anyone started the largest ever spaming we have ever seen. But we learned to control it, (somewhat), with spam filtering at servers and clients. But it has always been the case that the client has the final say in spam control. Exception are the black listed senders that are blocked by ISPs. Spam is a problem but so far we have managed to overcome that problem in various manner.

So why am I writing this? because I read an article about VoIP Spam today. I think the person who talked about the problem may have spoken more than what the writer wrote. But the article left a incomplete feeling inside me.
The expert is Tan Aksoy, managing director of Telappliant, and I do not have access to his speech. But the little I saw made no sense. He said "Good security and a VoIP provider that does not allow random in-bound calling, there are lots of ways of doing it,"
The first part is given for anything connected to Internet. Security must be paid attention, for Data and Voice as they are both different. But VoIP Provider stopping random inbound calls? No, VoIP provider connect user to the world. Yes exceptions like Black lists for VoIP spam could be used when we have come up with them. Provide users with abilities to control calls, start with caller ID!. Give them Unified Communication abilities but let the user decide what is best for them.
Because, if Post Office and AT&T did what Tan Aksoy say, I would not be able to keep in touch with my family, as most of the time I am away from home, where ever there is a scientific symposium,a research talk or just an invitation from another University. My call would be counted a random by VoIP provider.
And my Xmas cards would have never reached my family because post office would have deemed it random!, and those birthday cards I would send, sometimes from different place, every year!
I could not leave a comment at the site with post, but I hope I can get a better explanation from Telappliant, I will give you a connection to the post, perhaps they will notice my post.

VoIP spam ‘can be countered’