How secure is VoIP and you will get different replies for this question but still VoIP has been thriving. Recently you might have heard incidents of VoIP minutes being stolen. This is probably one of the threats which is looming over the VoIP industry and phreakers - a term for people who steal VoIP minutes and resell them in the grey market are raking in a moolah. This is how the phreakers operate - they hack into the gateways, steal the minutes and resell them to smaller companies which then illegally sell them through call centers or using printed phone cards.

If Stealth Communications is to be believed then the phreakers steal around a staggering two hundred million minutes per month valuing around $26 million. This is a pretty big figure and since most of them operate through websites it becomes difficult to track them down. These thieves are spread across Canada, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, Bulgaria, U.S and this is just a small link in the chain.

Hacking becomes more the less easy since it is quite simple to set up a temporary link through a hacked gateway. With a number of cheap illegal phreaker programs available the game becomes even simpler. Smaller firms are generally the target of these thieves since they cannot afford a secure gateway but that should not be the reason to ignore them rather the industry should come up with some cure for this menace because it's rightly said that it's better to be safe rather than sorry.