to Pierce Reid, vice president of marketing for Qovia Inc, a vendor of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) tools.
"With consumer adoption of VoIP taking off -- some estimates say a third of households will have Internet Telephony by 2008 -- it's only a matter of time before the spammers see a critical mass, says Reid.
According to Qovia, VoIP Spam is a combination of telemarketing calls and email spam in which a single "caller" uses Internet technology to send thousands of voice messages simultaneously into recipients VoIP voice mailboxes. The
United States Telecommunications Association recently described this capability as a top security challenge ahead for the telephony industry.
In an effort to prevent the spread of VoIP Spam, Qovia says it has created an application that can identify unsolicited and unwanted messages and differentiate these messages from those that recipients desire to receive. The company plans to incorporate this tool into a security module that will be available as part of the its VoIP Monitoring and Management System (VMMS) later this year. The company claims to have filed a patent application on the technique.
"Fortunately, we have learned from the telemarketing industry, then the email spammers, and, more recently, the Instant Messaging spammers," Reid adds. "And, we are able to begin to address the problem before it becomes an issue."
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