But tread lightly, says security expert William Stilson — who has contracted for companies from Microsoft to mom-and-pop software vendors — for hackers, spammers and trackers are coming.
“It’s a new technology, and like any new technology, people can get excited about it,” Stilson told XBiz. “But users need to remember that this stuff is totally open. It’s really easy to listen in if somebody wants to, so privacy is a major concern.”
As Google fights subpoenas for search data and President Bush hails wiretapping without a warrant, Stilson said companies investing in VoIP need to ask themselves whether money saved on the service is worth the risk.
“If I call you over a VoIP network right now, my voice becomes data on a network somewhere,” Stilson said. “If somebody breaks into that network, they have my voice.”
Just as there is spam email, spam phone calls may become just as common, Stilson said.
“Whatever you do, I would personally never discuss any information I cared to keep private over existing VoIP lines,” he said. “Personal information, bank data, even where I’m meeting my wife for lunch, no way.”
Existing services, like those offered by Skype and Yahoo, claim they use tough encryption codes to make packets sent over their networks hard to crack, but that isn’t enough for Stilson.
“Why take the risk?” he said. “It’s too new, and there’s no federal standards on how it should operate.”
The answer? Wait until around 2010. That’s when Stilson thinks the technology will be in enough homes to warrant stability. Citing a report by research firm Jupitermedia, he estimated 10-15 percent of households would be using VoIP by that time.
“In the meantime, if you’re using VoIP, do everything in your power to secure it,” he said.
