Think your Skype messages get end-to-end encryption? Think again!

by Volker Weber

there's a widely held belief—even among security professionals, journalists, and human rights activists—that Skype somehow offers end-to-end encryption, meaning communications are encrypted by one user, transmitted over the wire, and then decrypted only when they reach the other party and are fully under that party's control. This is clearly not the case if Microsoft has the ability to read URLs transmitted back and forth.

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Comments

Why would anyone think this? To be fair, did Skype (as an independent company, or otherwise) ever make such a claim? If so, I never noticed it - I'm intrigued...

Nick Daisley, 2013-05-20

https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use-encryption

Volker Weber, 2013-05-20

Well, it's kind of obvious that if a multi-party call can make the jump to the PSTN for one party, then there's no end-to-end encryption.

Richard Schwartz, 2013-05-20

Reminds me of the clanger in Homeland where the CIA use Skype for classified conversations:
http://brandsandfilms.com/2012/10/cia-using-skype-in-homeland/

Jake Howlett, 2013-05-22

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