I am not a technical expert, but I do agree that security is a much more serious issue today than in years past.
The fact is we have hackers and saboteurs (virus writers) out for harm. They spend hours of time trying to penetrate networks, to gain any foothold they can and worm their way as far inside as they can. This isn't anything new, but the potential for damage has increased as society is more dependent than ever on open networks that are penetrable.
To give one example, there was an Internet scam that secretly had a user's modem turn off sound and dial very expensive foreign countries to generate huge phone receipts. We don't want VOIP to be used for scams.
I have strong doubts whether this charge is true.
During the 1970s I heard this charge filed many times against the old Bell System about competing long distance service and customer owned equipment. But at the same time, I also saw many situations where the competing long distance failed or the customer equipment failed and the Bell System got the blame or was expected to somehow make it right. I saw many naive computer users get angry at Bell for refusing to fix their broken terminal because it was a non-Bell modem on it -- people certainly should not have expected Bell to fix someone else's product! Yet they did. Likewise when MCI failed to complete a call (as it did often) Bell got wrongly blamed. After divesture many people bought cheapo phones that broke easily and had lousy sound quality, making communiation impossible. (I finally told some friends I wouldn't talk to them over their cheapo phone and they agreed).
Anyway, today the cable companies lay their own fibre cable and has their own broadband infrastructure fully independent of Bell. They offer phone service. So today there is no need to hook up with the old Bell company at all.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And something else I thought was a pretty bad abuse was MCI and Sprint getting companies to sign up on *their* networks and then the companies would encourage people to use MCI/Sprint, ... "but for directory assistance, just use Bell and dial 555-1212 since it is 'free'; Sprint/MCI will charge us for their network." so people were to get free directory from Bell but use the cheaper carriers to place the actual calls. And people wonder why Bell started charging for calls to D.A. ! PAT]