Tom-Skype Personal Privacy Issues

I’m a big user of Skype, which if you’re unfamiliar with, is an online tool that allows users to make IP-based calls. It also includes an MSN like instant messaging component, which I, for one, use frequently. Unfortunately if you use Tom-Skype, a joint venture between Tom Online and Skype running the application in China, you may have had your privacy breached.

Researchers from the University of Toronto very recently found out that a large filtering system was being used in China with the intent to track and and keep records of certain text messages sent through TomSkype. The messages being targeted were those that  contained politically important keywords. These records were being held on computers that could essentially be accessed by anybody, including China’s government. Voice calls made by the program were not apart of the stored information.

Tom-Skype admitted to the activity on Thursday, and apologized for the incident. While a spokeswoman for Skype, an company owned by eBay, has confirmed the privacy invasion of their servers, and insist that the breach has been corrected.