Title
Online pairing of VoIP conversations
Abstract
This paper answers the following question; given a multiplicity of evolving 1-way conversations, can a machine or an algorithm discern the conversational pairs in an online fashion, without understanding the content of the communications? Our analysis indicates that this is possible, and can be achieved just by exploiting the temporal dynamics inherent in a conversation. We also show that our findings are applicable for anonymous and encrypted conversations over VoIP networks. We achieve this by exploiting the aperiodic inter-departure time of VoIP packets, hence trivializing each VoIP stream into a binary time-series, indicating the voice activity of each stream. We propose effective techniques that progressively pair conversing parties with high accuracy and in a limited amount of time. Our findings are verified empirically on a dataset consisting of 1,000 conversations. We obtain very high pairing accuracy that reaches 97% after 5 min of voice conversations. Using a modeling approach we also demonstrate analytically that our result can be extended over an unlimited number of conversations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1007/s00778-007-0087-5
The Vldb Journal
Keywords
Field
DocType
Stream clustering,Binary time-series clustering,Voice-over-IP,Conversation pairing
Conversation,Computer science,Network packet,Pairing,Speech recognition,Encryption,Aperiodic graph,Database,Voice over IP,Binary number
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
18
1
1066-8888
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.40
46
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Michail Vlachos11899113.39
Aris Anagnostopoulos2105467.08
Olivier Verscheure363042.88
Philip S. Yu4306703474.16