The Norman article from last year “Big Brother is HEARING you" ends with:

For now, happy VoIP, but... Be careful, you never know who will be listening in!

An ending which now turned out to be a clairvoyant message. Former CEO and Founder of Comverse Kobi Alexander was traced to the Sri Lankan capital Negombo after he placed a one-minute call using Skype. Kobi Alexander fled the US on the charges that he personally profited millions of dollars by tampering with option grant dates, all at the expense of Comverse stockholders.

The FBI already arrested some Comverse shareholders and the former Chief Financial Officer of Comverse on charges of defrauding. Kobi Alexander did not turn himself in and fled the country and his whereabouts were unknown ever since.

Believing that VoIP calls are safe to use and that tracking is not possible certainly proved wrong for Kobi Alexander. Even using anonymizers and other evasive actions to hide his whereabouts, it wasn’t safe. The call using the Skype service alerted some intelligence agencies to his presence in Sri Lanky after which he was tracked down by a private investigator.

A very interesting (highly technical) paper from the George Mason University in Fairfax, VA (USA) called “Tracking Anonymous Peer-toPeer VoIP Calls on the Internet" (link opens separate browser window) is describing the possibilities to nullify all these protections to hide your real internet location.

This event clearly shows that no matter what we do on the Internet, it is far from being anonymous.