I've been one of those voices saying SPIT isn't a real problem yet, it's potential. Alec and his point to Carlo raise the question again, is SPIT a real issue?

International Phone Spam

Over on TechDirt, Carlo has discovered the joys of international phone spam. Yup, callers from India, China, Malaysia, and Africa are using cheap VoIP to route around the do not call list, and harrass you (without fear of retribution) during dinner time.  In fact, just the other night (at 2:30 in the morning) I was disturbed by a caller from Africa while asleep in a hotel.

So perhaps now we're starting to see SPIT hitting more often. We always knew it could be a problem, we just hadn't been seeing. I still don't think we're seeing on large scale, but that doesn't mean the potential isn't there and that smart people aren't working on it.

At the recent VoIP Developer Conference, a speaker in a session said something that made me jot a side note to consider. I confess I haven't thought this through in depth, but let's set aside the entire issue of technology and the ramifications of SPIT on the network. We know it could impact QoS, network performance and all cause all sorts of problems.

What about the human factor? Does SPIT raise the spectre of human resource denail of service? If a voice spammer (spitter?) is able to bomb a business with voice message, and we overlook the technical aspects, what's the business impact of everyone in your company answering the phone, disrupting what they're doing, only to hear a telemarketing message? What's the impact if everyone in your company gets 10 such phone calls a day? 10 an hour?

Does SPIT raise the spectre of DoS through disruption of business at the human level? Email spam is less intrusive. It takes time to wade through, but email doesn't have the immediacy of the telephone ring. We receive email in the background while we work. But when the phones rings, workers around the world stop what they're working on to answer the phone.

I know it's something I'll do some more research and thinking on.


Technorati Tags: VoIP, voice spam, SPIT, unified communications, DoS, work disruption