Get ready for vam, or voice spam

So we officially got our first piece of "vam", or voice spam, the other day when Vonage, the broadband Voice over IP phone service we use here at Engadget HQ, dropped a promotional message into our voicemail box trying to convince us to upgrade our account. Not a big deal, right? The thing is, Vonage never called us. Because they use Voice over IP they were able to insert the message directly into our inbox, where it was waiting for us next time we checked our voicemail. It's just as easy for them to put a voicemail in everyone's inbox as it is to put into one person's, which is exactly why we have to deal with so much email spam. There are plenty of reasons why the phone system should switch over to Voice over IP, but at least with regular telemarketers even the canned calls had to be made one at a time, something which sorta slowed them down. When you have a system that more or less reduces the cost to sending voice messages down to zero, does anyone really doubt that it'll be abused by sleazebag spammers and telemarketers?

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

I got the same message. But it didn't strike me as that odd. Couldn't SBC do the same thing with their CallNotes voicemail offering, or VerizonWireless and other cell phone providers as well?

[Peter Rojas @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

The difference is that VoIP could possibly open this up to ANYONE, not just the carriers, meaning that with the click of a mouse a vammer, or whatever you want to call it, could flood voicemail boxes with messages.

[TheZodiac @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

I constantly get these (well maybe one a week) on my HOME phone. Basically a recording of some bitch telling how how a kick ass mortgage can save me, and all this other shit. What sucks is, I have to listen to the whole damn thing before I can delete it.

[Heather @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

Never fear, I'm sure they can figure out some form of a "vam" blocking feature. Besides, look on the bright side, you'll probably be able to make the "vamming" feature work to your benefit as well....like leaving 200 voicemails at once for all your friends to remind them about your party this weekend or to remind all parents about a PTA meeting.

[Heather @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

Never fear, I'm sure they can figure out some form of a "vam" blocking feature. Besides, look on the bright side, you'll probably be able to make the "vamming" feature work to your benefit as well....like leaving 200 voicemails at once for all your friends to remind them about your party this weekend or to remind all parents about a PTA meeting.

[Xuli @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

Hey, I can already make up group lists on my cell phone and landline telco-provided voicemail systems.

There's a big difference here...

I need to KNOW the people, or at least the numbers of the mailboxes of the interested parties to leave them a mass-voice-mailing... In the Vonage scenario, an unaffiliated third party can massively "notify" all users of a system. Blindly. Without any prior contact.

Therein lies the difference between a useful feature and a potential gateway to endless nuisance. Let's not confuse one with the other.

[Rajiv Dhir @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

Actually in the UK at least I have gotten automated cold calls. You pick up the phone and a recorded message greets you to tell you you have won a prize, press 9 for details. Presumably if you are that dumb you get a person who is less dumb on the other end - I've never dared press the button, but I hate the fact that they are wasting my time with their computer.

[Scooby @ Dec 19th 2005 12:03AM]

"In the Vonage scenario, an unaffiliated third party can massively "notify" all users of a system. Blindly. Without any prior contact."

Ummmm, no. No, they can't. Vonage used the broadcast feature of their messaging system to send an offer to their subscribers. No third party exploited, or is likely to exploit, the system. Presumably Vonage has the same level of protection around their messaging system that all large hosted messaging providers have.

It's fun to imagine that IP somehow fundamentally changes the nature of a known technology. And a voice mailbox stuffed to bursting with herbal Viagra ads creates a powerful image that causes most folks to reflexively cringe. But this is a very unlikely scenario, given that most major providers are paying close attention to issues of system security as they deploy.

To claim otherwise is to imply that we learned nothing from years of experience with POP3 and spam.