Title: Economic assessment of externalities for interactive audio media anti-SPIT protection of internet services

Authors: Theodosios Tsiakis; Panagiotis Katsaros; Dimitris Gritzalis

Addresses: Department of Marketing, Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, P.O. 141, 57400, Sindos, Thessaloniki, Greece. ' Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Aristotle University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece. ' Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business, 6 Papaflessa St., Dasos-Haidari, GR-12462, Athens, Greece

Abstract: Spam over internet telephony (SPIT) refers to all unsolicited and massive scale attempts to establish voice communication with oblivious users of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services. SPIT exhibits a significant increase over the last years, thus developing into a serious threat with adverse impact and costs for the business economy. An audio completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and human apart (CAPTCHA) has been introduced as a means to distinguish automated software agents (bots) from human. CAPTCHA has been proposed as a security measure against SPIT. In this paper, we lay the principles for an adequate understanding of the SPAM-related economic models, as well as their analogies to the SPIT phenomenon, so as to weigh the benefits of audio CAPTCHA protection against the incurred costs. Our approach is based on the economic assessment of externalities, i.e., the economic impact associated with the SPIT side effects on the everyday life.

Keywords: security economics; spam over internet telephony; SPIT; audio CAPTCHA protection; voice over internet protocol; VoIP; externalities; web services; economic assessment; interactive audio media; voice communication; automated software agents; bots; public Turing test; economic models.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2012.048416

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2012 Vol.4 No.2/3, pp.164 - 177

Received: 02 Dec 2011
Accepted: 28 Mar 2012
Published online: 19 Nov 2014 *

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