VoIP Spam: Calling You From Nigeria

VoIP has dropped the cost of international calls so drastically that sleazy marketers and scammers call into the U.S. from overseas to evade our country's do-not-call regulations. And the problem is only getting worse. A Techdirt blog warns that the spammers and scammers are using VoIP from overseas in concert with autodialers and recorded messages to make calls to people in the U.S.

The calls come in without caller ID information, making them just about impossible to trace. And considering that they're calling from overseas, they're not particularly worried about being tracked down,in any event.

One would think that there would be an economic disincentive to make these calls. After all, they do cost something, even if it's only pennies. And does anyone really fall for these scams?

The unfortunate answer is yes. People still fall for email scams, and the infamous Nigerian email scam is alive and well. So there are plenty of suckers out there who will fall for VoIP-based scams as well.

Making things worse is that the open source PBX Asterisk makes it easy for scammers to set up phony PBX and voice trees that can also be used in scams.The upshot? Plenty more VoIP spam is heading your way -- straight from Nigeria, Asia, and beyond.