Measuring Honesty With VoIP

December 18th, 2006: Office slackers, professional sociopaths beware – Skype’s VoIP services will soon have an ear for untruths and be more accountable.

Those who are unafraid of calling in to chuck a sickie could be subject to more than just the boss’s scrutiny soon, at least if they use Skype to do so. The company will be offering lie detector software that can analyse calls in real time and pinpoint vocal stress levels on the other end of the line.

Called Kishkish, the software will be a free downloadable extra for the popular free internet voice service. On its website, the company says that all people share constantly changing stress levels. It says its software measures a person’s current range and ranks changes which can show “the 'perceived jeopardy' or 'danger' of statements being made.”

Apart from apparently detecting lies, the service also allows conversations to be recorded and analysed at a later date - a feature that could also be useful for archiving voice conversations for compliance purposes.

To avoid any legal hang-ups, the service automatically notifies the person on the other end of the line that it is being used on them.

Auction giant eBay picked up the telecommunications software provider and its estimated 136 million users in September last year for a heart-stopping $US2.6 billion. No release date has been set for Kishkish’s release.

Comment on this story