Tamas Henning

As many of you already know, there has been a reporting going around about the Tom-Skype software developed in a joint venture between TOM Online and Skype which is dedicated to the users in China. So I’m not really going to talk about that report since already a lot of people wrote about it.

Instead I would like to write a few lines about a new blog post by Skype CEO Josh Silverman (which can be found here). The blog post answers a few very commonly asked questions about this situation. Like for instance “Is Skype secure???” The one word answer for this is YES. But I’ll elaborate a bit more on this. As stated before, the privacy breach has been only detected in the TOM-Skype version, while the standard version you can download from skype.com is complete safe. I know some users might doubt how safe the standard client can be, if the TOM-Skype version is already doing this… But for those skeptics I only have one question: do you have a mobile phone?

I don’t blame TOM Online for doing this maneuver since doing business implies following the law, and if the law forces you to do things your chose is the following: Do it or pull out. It’s not easy to do business in today’s world, but are we sure that China is the only country spying on their people? I for one am not so sure. Security and personal safety has been a serious problem over the past decade and who knows what things could’ve happened if certain people weren’t wiretapped. I only can imagine where we would be today. I accept the fact that I may be monitored by some agency or what not because what do I have to hide that they wouldn’t find out if they wanted to? I only would have a problem if my personal life would get public through these agency otherwise I couldn’t care less… let them listen I don’t have anything to hide. This is just my personal opinion and not everyone has to accept it.

Just a quick summary, be assured if you’re using the standard Skype version downloadable from skype.com everything is ok.

Is Skype secure?
Yes. Skype-to-Skype conversations are among the most secure and private forms of communication publicly available today.

(Quote by Josh Silverman, Skype CEO)

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Just stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.