Security Concerns of new alternative telecommunication services

Abstract

With the advancing new era of communication, the so-called era of ‘being always online’ many providers offer their services for free. In that sense a small company or a virtual company becomes a huge competitor for different traditional telecommunication providers. Using the same services such as: voice calls, video calls, chat and similar services, the internet technology has made huge changes how users make use of such services . Instead of using these services, users shall install applications that are specialized for offering these services via applications, such as: Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google Talk etc.. During the installation and update of these applications people do not recognize the risks of security and privacy of the information that makes their business vital, and how such information are abused on the fly and reused for unauthorized purposes. Using qualitative and quantitative methods we have conducted an empirical study focused on the usage of “these” services and we have elaborated further the need for increasing the knowledge of people in the area of security and privacy while using “free” services. This paper will highlight the challenges by setting a number of privacy and security concerns that are violated while using “free” online services, also offering a bird’s eye view of numerous recommendations developed by various standard organizations.