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So you have seen the ads on TV, and heard the commercials on the radio. You think Voice over Internet Protocol might be the way to save some big money on your phone bill. Easy installation, no worries, no hassles, cheap service. Right? Well, that might be true to a certain extent.

There are some definite advantages to having VoIP service, but there are some definite disadvantages as well, some you may want to consider long and hard before signing up with your VoIP provider of choice

Sure Voice over Internet Protocol can significantly reduce the amount of money you may spend on long distance charges if you make lots of out of area calls, which for most users is why they would want VoIP service in the first place. But few people consider what they are giving up for the sake of new technology.

Companies are switching to VoIP service for the larger benefits that it provides the business arena. Voice over Internet Protocol offers business the ability to do more effective multi user collaborations. It gives them a better range of scalability in managing communication and data networks and the ability to merge the two if needed. But what most large businesses have that the home users doesn't have are technical support people to manage and monitor their communications networks. Here in lays the beginning of the list of disadvantages to the home consumer.

If you know anything about Internet service at all, you are by now aware of some of the dangers of using the internet and how they might affect you personally. Things like Identity theft, phishing scams, Spam, Viruses, malware, Trojans, Dos or denial of service attacks, and other nasty internet problems.

What most people don't know it that VoIP services at present are susceptible to most all of these types of problems and a few new ones that came about and are targeted directly at VoIP service users. Although some of the terms used to describe the problems might have changes a bit when applied to VoIP, it doesn't lessen their impact. Things like Spam have become SPIT or Spamming over Internet Telephony. The purpose of this article is not to go into detail about describing individual threats to VoIP service but shed some light on the fact that there are concerns.

Eavesdropping is the common way that most credentials and other information are stolen via VoIP. By this means a third party can collect names, password and phone numbers, giving them the means to gain control over voicemail boxes, calling plan variable setups, call forwarding and billing information. Through these kinds of captured information, the hackers can begin the process of theft of service.

Call tampering is made much easier for those that know how, by use of Voice over Internet Protocol. The ability to carry out so called Man-in-the-middle attacks is what one might compare to a physical line tap that you hear about law enforcement doing in the news, except that hackers can now do it, without you know it, gaining information of all sorts that you might divulge in a normal conversation.

During these kinds of attacks, the hacker can do several things, from disrupting the voice call by dirtying up the connection, to intercepting information that could put you at risk for identity theft, to actually incepting and replacing information with their own, depending on the type of information sent, such as fax transmissions or possibly fabricated voice communications. Many VoIP services can run on what are known as softphone, which are applications run on PC's or PDA's, opening these devises up to all manner of virus and malware.

What has been outlined here, should give home users cause to consider more carefully their decision to signup with a VoIP service provider. There are measures that can be taken to protect end users from the Internet Nasties associated with VoIP but they add to the complexity of the entire process and eventually to the cost. Providers are working had on implementing security measure that will protect customers from these security threats, but it's not a perfect world.

My advice, if you currently have DSL and regular phone company service, would be to consider at great length if the money you save is worth the security you might have to give up to have cheap long distance Service. Tomorrow may bring a day when all home based voice communications travel over VoIP networks, but its not going to happen over night so to speak.

How safe do you feel when you pick up your phone?

By Scott Best