Google Watch - Archive - Phone Spam: Plenty of 'Solutions'; No Problem

Phone Spam: Plenty of ‘Solutions’; No Problem

Written By
Ben Charny
Ben Charny
Feb 23, 2006
1 minute read
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The security buzzards are doing their thing now that Google Inc. and other search giants are adding Internet phone calls into search advertisements.

By tinkering with something like click-to-call as Google’s been doing, Internet search providers open up their customers to IP and marketing baddies that have corrupted other Internet facets.

It’s classic cause-and-effect, or so goes the argument from Qovia and other like-minded concerns.

Agreed, there’s lots of reasons to be worried. But no one GoogleWatch spoke with in the last few days knows of any actual instance of advertising-phone features used to make crank phone calls, or anything more nefarious.

Yet lots of people seem to believe there is reason to be concerned, which keeps the issue alive and well, and enterprises spending money on the hardware. This comment section typifies the dialog about Google’s click-to-talk. At one point, someone always seems to express fear about it.

There’s even been thinly-veiled muster of a prank of this nature.

But has anyone every actually suffered just such an attack?

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