Technology to prevent Spam over VOIP

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) looks to be the next big deal, a business disrupter that could change everything in the telecoms world. With more and more telcom gaints moving todawds the VOIP, there is a chalange awaiting 'VoIP spam'--an endless series of automated advertising and human enquiry annoyances delivered over a voice network. It looks like one step forward and two back unless somebody takes action to curb that possibility along with others.

NEC recently has announced the development of new technology for the prevention of spam over Internet telephony (SPIT). The new technology, VoIP SEAL, which defends against the threat of rapidly increasing spam IP phone calls. The technology discovers whether a caller is a human or a machine by testing the machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Once the technology determines that a machine has made the call, it blocks the connection, preventing the user's phone from ringing. Calls arising from spam-generating-software and calls from real individuals are separated by a Turing test.

Before connecting the call, VoIP SEAL detects and blocks the unauthorized access based on the communication pattern observed during a call.By adopting a module structure, VoIP SEAL enables rapid response to new kinds of SPIT attacks, without adjusting the system, by adding and updating modules to respond to new and different kinds of SPIT.