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Don't fall prey to these methods of VoIP abuse

Internet telephony is the appropriate name. Labeling it as VOIP is a misdirection. Anything that transmits voice data and uses IP can loosely be classified as VOIP. The standard VOIP is an IP based phone system that runs on a LAN/Wan network. Although the Internet may be present on that network it is not Internet telephony. Most folks who use Internet telephony use it at home.

For those who use Internet telephony this is a very informative article. For those who use VOIP after the confusion it is an interesting read.

as a company can be using 'voip' which uses all or in part leased lines between locations. And to confuse it even more, there is now a 'voip' company that DOESN'T use the internet for transmission of the call. Once connected either from your PC or an actual cell phone, it uses their own transmission lines to get to the destination landline or back to the net to PC

Your description of how SPIT works leaves alot of questions. I understand you can't fully explain the technical details of how a person would hack a VoIP phone system. But just the basics of networking contradict your description. Even if a hacker obtains many internet IP addresses, the principle of NAT and firewalls should protect the VoIP phone system and voicemail server.

Now if they somehow collected phone numbers, they could spam the voicemail system like a traditional auto-dialer on a PSTN phone system. Having internet IP addresses doesn't seem to have much value if the network and security is configured properly.

Am I missing something here?

Thank you,

Paul DeGeiso