Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Skype Security and Privacy Concerns

Scott Granneman’s new column on SecurityFocus showed up on their security-basics mail­ing list earlier today. In it, he writes about his wor­ries fol­low­ing eBay’s aquis­i­tion of Skype earlier this month.

The main points he makes are that for one, Skype claims to be pro­tec­ted by “strong encryp­tion” but as it’s a closed-source product that uses a pro­pri­et­ary pro­tocol, that can’t be inde­pend­ently veri­fied. Secondly, his­tory has shown eBay to be ridicu­lously glib with law enforce­ment agen­cies — not requir­ing a sub­poena or court order in order to hand over most of a user’s inform­a­tion. In fact, a simple fax on “offi­cial let­ter­head” is all they require. When a com­pany with atti­tudes like this is put in charge of the private com­mu­nic­a­tions of mil­lions of people, this can only be bad news.