John P. Mello Jr., PC World / USA
The company regularly checks the content of messages sent through the service for signs of fraud, but what is done with the information from these checks is unknown
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If you have any expectations about the privacy of their communications on Skype, you may want to reassess them. Microsoft seems to be “spying” messages from your service for safety reasons, according to Ars Technica.
The company regularly checks the content of messages sent through the service for signs of fraud, but what is done with the information from these checks – if they are stored indefinitely or destroyed – is unknown.
Similar findings were published by The H Security last week. “Skype uses automated scanning in instant messaging to identify unwanted messages and addresses from websites that have previously been marked as spam, phishing or fraud,” said the spokesman of the company, James Blamey, by e-mail.
However, H Security said Microsoft appears to be leaving the HTTP URLs untouched while checking for HTTPS URLs. HTTPS URLs are usually linked to secure sites and not spam.
discovered by Ars Technica and the independent security researcher, Ashkan Soltani, raises questions about the privacy of communications on Skype.
is also a potential bomb for Microsoft, which has maintained a large marketing campaign – called “
What this means
What these recent findings mean is that Skype users can no longer wait for their calls and chats are private, said Solvani.
“The expectation was that I write to you, will be only for you,” he told PCWorld. “However, this finding shows that Microsoft is able to monitor it.”
Moreover, once the company collects data from a message, it is not clear what she does with them. It is also not known where the data is being gathered. “If they are tracking URLs in chat, what else can they monitor? They can record all your conversations?” Said Solvani.
If this is the case, he said, Microsoft could be forced by the government to enable monitoring of a user, if you suspect any irregularities.
“Until now, we had no data to show that Microsoft has that ability,” he said. “Now we have.”
A little history
Security Skype privacy was questioned earlier this year by a number of civil rights groups, including Frontier Foundation and Reporters without Borders.
“Many of your users rely on Skype to protect your communications – be they activists operating in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, are journalists who communicate with sensitive sources or users who wish to talk privately with business partners, family or friends, “wrote the groups in a
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