Subject: [Asrg] Anybody interested in joining me on a VoIP spam session, Apr 2, San Jose

From: Brad Templeton <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:18:05 -0800

I'm doing a brief re-bow in to the list (I had to leave due to the immense
volume) to see if anybody is interested in speaking on a panel I'm convening
April 2 at the Pulver.com "Voice on the net" conference (www.pulver.com/von).

This is an interesting conference if you have interest in voice over IP,
SIP and H.323 and the like, which are slowly creating a new generation of
telephony.

However, one of the problems that nobody seems to have thought enough about
in the VoIP world is spam.  If we build an infrastructure of VoIP phones,
with SIP URLs that can be phoned by anybody -- as people hope to do, to
replace the PSTN -- then eventually there will be a spam problem.

As you might guess, it would be attractive to spammers if they can
get an overseas machine to simultaneously phone zillions of IP phones,
and play them audio.  They will use tricks like using a low-bandwidth codec
for the first 20 seconds, and if you don't hang up, switching to a higher
bandwidth one to play you their message.   And predictive dialing tricks
(which get you all those blank phone calls today) will get even worse.  They
will INVITE 1,000 phones, and only play audio to as many as they have
bandwidth to handle, leaving the rest with a blank call.

I usually do a session at this conference on privacy and security issues
and thought this would be a cool topic to address.  I will talk about it,
as well as other issues, but don't want to take the whole hour for myself.

There are lessons from E-mail that might be brought forward.  At the same
time, there are principles to preserve, of an open, end-to-end phone network
where anybody can call anybody, instead of a super-secured one where only
known people can talk to you.   And there are combination solutions, where
people initiate contact with e-mail and move to voice at the agreement of
the recipient.

Unlike E-mail, SIP has not yet taken over the world of the phone and it
still is subject to improvement wrt this issue.

Anyway, interesting problems.  If this appeals to you, send me a direct
E-mail.  Thanks.
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