As shown by the recent arrest in the case of terrorist who were hacking AT&T business customers to fund Al-Qaeda; Telecom Fraud has come a long way from Captain Crunch and Steve Jobs phreaking Ma Bell for fun and glory. It is now big business aimed at stealing from you via your PBX. Let’s discuss actual cases and some things you can do to make sure your PBX is not funding terror.

Eric Klein of Humbug Labs will attack this topic on short notice, due to a cancellation. Here’s a link to the Humbug Blog.

Add your questions and comments for Simwood and ThreatSTOP to the VUC G+ post

Simwood provides international carrier services with wholesale IP telephony and a portfolio of managed services, including their pioneering use of  ThreatSTOP in the VoIP space (and also DDoS mitigation).

ThreatSTOP is included in the Simwood DDoS Security solution, as the second layer in multiple tiers of defence. It is also available as a product in its own right. It can represent a first step to full protection by complementing existing security solutions, but it can also complement the full Simwood solution by offering an additional layer of bespoke on-site protection. Notably, the service offers the option to block by country, maintain customer-specific block lists and include/exclude sub-lists to reflect the level of tolerance desired.

VoIP scams and fraud: the mildly bothersome, the ethically dubious, and the outright illegal of business models used by unscrupulous VoIP service providers (and other elements of the supply chain) to game the system in order to sell you (and each other) lemons.

Andy Abramson, Dan York, David Frankel, Jim O’Brien (Counterpath Director NCG Customer Engineering), Kelly Fitzsimmons, Karl Fife and more on day two of eComm 2011 in San Francisco.

Chris Matthieu on Tropo.com, great added comments by Tim Panton. Michael Graves, just back from NAB with a few notes. Karl Fife on WebOS (just kidding!)

Bad Wifi at the trade show, new Siemens Gigaset handsets and more DECT comments. Profiles on mobile devices, sharing books on Kindle, Nook, Android, iOS, etc.

This month, many exclusive news items have been obtained by the VUC and we will be sharing these scoops with you this Friday.
photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

VoIP Users Conference (VUC) is probably the largest and longest-running weekly meeting of an international technology group. Callers join us live from at least 3 continents each week. This “Christmas Eve Edition” lasted 6 1/2 hours. The first two segments are just above. Here’s the final segment: 3 hours and 45 minutes. A few highlights:

Adam Kalsey of Tropo on connecting Skype to Tropo. I’ve tried just about everything but SMS and IM on Tropo for the moment. It’s hard to believe how easy it is to get started in a language of your choice: JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, Python or Groovy. This overview will convince you to get started, since it’s completely FREE to develop a Tropo app. Creating a simple IVR in PHP took me about 5 minutes, and because they have international DID available, I was able to see what it sounds like on the phone and Skype and even do proof of concept demos for my customers.

Michael Graves tries to get the Gigaset  DE380 firmware updated and connected in g722.

Dave Michels of Pin Drop Soup fame chimes in about Google’s Chrome OS netbook prototype

David Frankel of ZipDX talks about the REINVITE issues they face with non-standard SIP implementations

Crap support

Did I ever mention that support for Skype for Business is one of the worst I’ve ever experienced? Skype blocked one of my accounts last week and it took 4 days to get it unblocked, during which I told them “I can’t log in” and they wrote back with reasons my account might be blocked and suggesting I “log in to my account…” and I wrote back saying “but I can’t log in…” etc ad nauseum. Skype support sucks, no better way to say it.

Great support

On the other hand, Voxeo support, which I also experienced that same week, is excellent. I went to their #tropo IRC channel, and had answers within minutes and action on my account from a Voxeo support person. Kudos to Voxeo.

VUC, our international user group meets every week at 12 Noon EST. To see the time in your area, visit Permatime. This week, some of the regulars were called away but most of us did make cameo appearances. This week we spoke about mobiles and mobile data plans and access.

Our Google Group and Mailing List welcomes your membership. Be sure to give a brief intro, just a few words about your interest in technology.

Join us any Friday, we’re happy to answer questions and discuss tech topics of all kinds.

Linkedin: http://vuc.me/linkedin

Facebook: http://facebook.com/voipusers

Twitter: @VoipUsers

We talk about several topics in part 2 including Skype, USB connections for VoIP, new devices like the Gigaset One, a cellphone gateway. Lots of talk about NAT with Asterisk and SIP. The usual chatter from friends around the table in our weekly “club”.

Among the participants Tim @steely_glint, Neil from IdeaSIP, Karl @karlfife, Michael @mjgraves and Graves on SoHo VoIP, David Frankel from ZipDX who furnish our great wideband conference facilities, Dave @DaveMichels from Pin Drop Soup, Pascal from Media5.

Welcome to a very old friend of mine, Bob from Future Video. The VUC encourages new people to be a part of our weekly talks. Please join us so you can chime in, ask questions and generally have a great time.

Session 1: [audio:http://media.blubrry.com/winelover/recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-22622/TS-306531.mp3|titles=best and worst of 2009 and future of VoIP]

Andy Abramson (VoIP Watch), Tim Panton (PhoneFromHere.com), Michael Graves (Graves on SoHo VoIP), David Frankel (ZipDX.com), Ward Mundy (Nerd Vittles), Dave Michels (PinDropSoup.com),  Randal Schwartz , Dave Chan and others discuss the year 2009 and VoIP and the usual digressions.

At the end of session one you can hear the New Years Greetings from listeners and participants.

Session 2:
[audio:http://media.blubrry.com/winelover/recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-22622/TS-308412.mp3|titles=Part 2 of VUC Jan 1 2010]