News - Skype (Microsoft) won't promise it's not intercepting your calls

Quote:

---

The firm remains both evasive and suggestive when it comes to privacy.

---

Read more.

Thing is.. Nearly every company is on the cloud and "your privacy is now ours but it's free" train. Leave Skype for.. who, what? Google GMail chat? That is probably even worse in terms of privacy. EU is kicking hard at the moment regarding privacy protection etc. but how long do we have until most services are free and everything and anything we do is shared in one way or the other. Google started it nicely with decent search engine, gmail, maps, browser.. and now our information is at Google's disposal.

Some of us value our privacy and don't use anything which can compromise it. I've never used Skype and now never will. I'm all for the Police being able to access things when there is probable cause, but I don't trust any company with my data.

I still store everything local, safest, most efficient for me as I don't use mobile apps... I don't even own a mobile phone!

Move to OOvOO which I have used for some years now. Much better than Skype ever was.

Quote:

---

is Skype still secure

---

It never has been; it's been known for quite some time it's fairly simple to monitor Skype calls despite the encryption because of the VBR codec used. The P2P nature would make it tricky for a third party to monitor specific calls, and it would be possible for reasonably advanced users to check if calls are being bounced around, but any relays or ISPs on the way would still be able to monitor them in theory.

If you want secure, surely you wouldn't be using a proprietary software package from a company who frequently dodge questions about security. Even if their intentions were good, not revealing the security implementation isn't great either. There's always SIP, and you can add whatever you want on top of it to encrypt calls...