An Update On The Tom-Skype Privacy Issues

October 5th, 2008 | Posted in web news

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

A few days ago, I posted about the privacy issues facing Tom-Skype users in China, as it was discovered that the company had been storing instant messages containing politically sensitive keywords. Today brings a bit of an update on the situation, as Skype has publicly declared that they had no knowledge of the activities taking place by their partners, Tom-Skype.

Here is a quote from Skype’s president Josh Silverman, as was posted on the company’s official blog:

“It was our understanding that it was not TOM’s protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords,” he writes in the blog. “And we are now inquiring with TOM to find out why the protocol changed.”

He goes on to explain that it is common practice in China for the government to monitor instant messaging chats, however the information is not generally stored. Instead, such communications are usually discarded and simply not transmitted to the intended party.

Personally, I was glad to see how quickly Skype acted on resolving this issue, and will continue to use their services with confidence. Granted, it’s a little easier for me to do, as North Americans were not affected by the privacy breach.

Bookmark and Share