Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Skyping for Microsoft

Interesting:

Anyone who uses Skype has consented to the company reading everything they write. The H's associates in Germany at heise Security have now discovered that the Microsoft subsidiary does in fact make use of this privilege in practice. Shortly after sending HTTPS URLs over the instant messaging service, those URLs receive an unannounced visit from Microsoft HQ in Redmond.

A reader informed heise Security that he had observed some unusual network traffic following a Skype instant messaging conversation. The server indicated a potential replay attack. It turned out that an IP address which traced back to Microsoft had accessed the HTTPS URLs previously transmitted over Skype.  --Ticker quoting The H's Security

MS' goon squad will utilize whatever you text to access whatever it can.

Nice, eh?

1 comment:

Tim Morrissey said...

Good point, Dad. This sort of thing is generally true of ANY online activity. Somebody else can read it. It isn't "private" unless you encode/encrypt it on both ends. Lawyers and bankers are pretty much aware of this, and there are several outfits in business solely to provide the software for such applications.