Communications of the ACM
Signing Contracts on the Telephone
Credit: The Washington Note
The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) in Germany has developed VoIPS, software that prevents the tampering and manipulation of telephone calls. The software is designed to create a digital signature that would make an archive of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls legally binding.
Currently, it is possible to change or conclude contracts over Internet telephony. The researchers say that businesses can use VoIPS with IP telephone systems to record a contract once a customer confirms the deal. The digital signature technology divides the telephone calls into intervals and signs the transmitted data packets with corresponding metadata. VoIPS assigns a distinctive encoded digital stamp to each interval, which ensures that the separate packages are stored in the correct order. As a result, the key information of stored calls is combined in an indivisible chain, and would make it easy for a business to see when a call has been changed.
From Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
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