Think your Skype messages are secure? Nope, microsoft is reading Skype messages!-gctid82234

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Think your Skype messages are secure? Nope, microsoft is reading Skype messages     Microsoft has been caught accessing Skype messages that are supposedly encryptedAvailable from: Think your Skype messages are secure? Nope, microsoft is reading Skype messages | ITworld                  By Melanie Pinola        2

May 22, 2013, 1:23 PM —  
    Image credit: flickr/Mr Thinktank
 
  Most people probably think their Skype communications are safe from prying eyes and ears. After all, Skype says  all Skype-to-Skype voice, video, and instant messages are encrypted.  Ars Technica and privacy and security researcher Ashkan Soltani,  however, have discovered that Microsoft can decrypt the message  contents.
 In the Ars Technica article,  Dan Goodwin writes that Ars sent four web links, created solely for  this test, through Skype and two of them were clicked on from a machine  with an IP address belonging to Microsoft.
 So it turns out Skype doesn't offer end-to-end encryption if  Microsoft can read URLS transmitted over Skype. Microsoft says it  regularly scans message contents "for signs of fraud, and company  managers may log the results indefinitely," according to Ars. As  security company Sophos points out,  however, Skype's privacy policy does state it uses automated scanning  within instant messages and SMS, so maybe the eavesdropping shouldn't be  a surprise.
 The takeaway, though, is if you thought Skype messages can't be or aren't tapped, think again.
 Read more of Melanie Pinola's Tech IT Out blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Melanie on Twitter at @melaniepinola. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.