The future of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) systems (SKYPE)

According to the United States of America’s Federal Communication Commission, “a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that allows one to make voice calls using a broadband internet connection instead of the regular (or analog) phone line”.

VoIP is a technology that allows telephone calls to be made over computer networks like the Internet. VoIP converts analog voice signals into digital data packets and supports real-time, two-way transmission of conversations using Internet Protocol (IP). The most common form of VoIP system is Skype. Skype is a free-mium VoIP service and an instant messaging platform developed by Microsoft, first released in August 2003. Skype runs on a proprietary network protocol i.e. a network that does not comply to any open standards.

The future of VoIP systems is uncertain due to some risks and privacy issues involved.

Arguably, there some issues of email spamming on internet users. The VoIP systems opens yet another gateway for these spam issues. As the usage of VoIP increases, so will this strategy of marketing via this system increase. This kind of spamming is known as Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT). Like email spamming, sending commercial messages via VoIP is relatively cheap and fast. The VoIP offers a potential of large volumes of unsolicited calls. This is due to the wide range of tools available to attackers. These commercial messages are done by telemarketers.

Another issue is Spoofing. Spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate advantage. For example, an attacker could possibly inject a bogus caller ID into an ordinary VoIP call so that the receiver believes the call to be coming from a known and trusted source (a bank, for example). The receiver, fooled by the electronic identification of the caller, may place unwarranted trust in the person at the other end. In such an exchange, the receiver may be tricked into disclosing personal information like account numbers, social security numbers, or secondary authentication factor: a mother’s maiden name, for example. This scheme is essentially the VoIP version of traditional phishing, where a user follows links in an unsolicited email and is tricked into providing personal information on a bogus web site. Attackers may use these bits and pieces of personal information to complete partial identity records of victims of identity theft.

Confidentiality concerns on VoIP are been questioned. VoIP data sometimes travels unencrypted over the internet. In this light, it is possible for someone to collect this data and attempt to reconstruct a conversation.