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    • July 31st, 2012 03:23 PM

    Does Skype Really Spy On Its Users?

    Skype has been involved into a scandal. The company is charged with spying on its users. In an official blog of the company Mark Gillett, CEO at Skype, commented on the matter.

    Several weeks ago rumors appeared that Microsoft by means of Skype is spying on the service’s users. It was said that Skype deliberately upgraded to Linux servers in order to make the spying process much easier. In an article published in The Washington Post it was mentioned that according to the inside sources Skype was really monitoring text chats of its users. Skype’s management in its turn denies all accusations.

    Recently on the official Skype blog Mark Gillett, Skype’s CEO, left profound and thorough comment on the matter. First of all Gillett noted that all the charges filed against the company are nothing more than false; Skype was and continues to be the consumer oriented company.

    The reason of filing an accusation against Skype was the updates the company recently made for the service’s architecture. However, Gillett assures that the changes were made just to provide users with the services of higher quality. He also noted that Skype was considering the possibility of moving their supernodes to the cloud well before Microsoft became the owner of Skype.

    Concerning their relationships with law enforcement, Gillett said that according to the current policy of the company that, by the way, has not changed since 2005, Skype would start to collaborate with them only after the former would follow all necessary procedures.

    In his post Skype’s CEO claimed that the move to in-house hosting in any way doesn’t provide them with the ability to spy on their users. The intended use of the in-house servers, according to Gillett, is to better establish calls. Access to all the information delivered during calls (audio/video) has only the participants of the conversation; such data are never transferred through the servers of the service.

    In the article in the Washington Post it was said that Skype violated the privacy policy of its users by monitoring their instant messages. Mark Gillett acknowledged that the service does really store messages on its servers but only temporarily in case the intended recipient at the moment of sending a message was unavailable. Gillett highlighted the word ‘temporarily’ as messages are never stored on the company’s servers for a long period of time.

    Gillett also said that the company made everything possible to protect users’ conversations from the prying eyes. He said that messages are encrypted the same way they were encrypted earlier. The only Skype version that has undergone some changes is the China’s version. According to local laws it is allowed to use chat filters there.

    Mark Gillett’s detailed post about the service’s operations was conditioned upon the necessity to quash rumors about the company’s unlawful spying on Skype’s users. Gillett hopes that explanations given in his post will help to overpersuade the majority of the service’s users that the company does not provide any illegal activity.

    Bizzteams.com

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