Voip Tech Chat

News.com (CNET.com for those who kick it old school) posted a great article about privacy, encryption, and security with instant messaging (“How safe is instant messaging? A security and privacy survey“). Not only did CNET.com make a nice, pretty chart of their findings, they actually talked to the most popular IM choices and some of the answers are really intriguing.

Among the many questions asked by CNET.com were:

• Does your service keep server-based logs of the content of communications, meaning what a particular user sent and received?
• Have you ever received a subpoena, court order or other law enforcement request asking you to turn over information about a user’s IM account?
• If so, how many law enforcement requests have you received?
• Have you ever received a subpoena, court order or other law enforcement request asking you to perform a live interception or wiretap, meaning the contents of your users’ communications would be instantly forwarded to law enforcement?

The standard answer to these questions was the ol’ standard that communication with Law Enforcement is not discussed — aka, we fully comply. Skype though gets huge points from us for many reasons.

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The voip insider blog has a great article about Craigslist and VoIP.

Craigslist is using a calling system to help reduce their fraud. In a nutshell, basically they call you and give you a code. When you enter the code back into their website, they are happy and allow you to post on their website.

Well, the system they use to reduce fraud is automatically assuming numbers listed with VoIP carrier companies such as Level3 are fraud. Level3 happens to be one of the largest VoIP carriers in the world; handling traffic for almost every major VoIP company.

So, if you were happy with your new VoIP provider and ported your number, would Craigslist still assume you were a bad person?

With all of the people switching to VoIP service, we’re sure this oversight will be corrected shortly.