Skype, a common online tool for users to make online phone calls and carry on instant messaging conversations all over the world. This software is available all over the globe, so obviously many things are going to be spoken about. Skype claims that it has 338 million world wide, as for the Chinese version, there have been some problems. A canadian researcher has discovered that the Chinese software for Skype has a built in system that "looks" out for certain words, such as democracy and milk powder. Milk powder being the latest scandal in China, Chinese milk was "tainted by a substance" , that contaminated the milk and led to people becoming ill and sometimes death. Anyhow, this canadian researcher has come across the issue of internet control and how mch the government should be censoring these online conversations. The Chinese version of Skype is called Tom-Skype, and it has a filter, that is badly secured, that looks for these certain sensitive words. Villeneuve, the Canadian researcher found out that due to the bad security of the message filter, he found more than 1 million messages that had been deemed suspicious, due to the sensitive words that it contained. However Skype has made statements that Skype is in no way able to be tapped or eavesdropped on due to the encryption on each computer that is receiving the messages. Skype is saying that it has never been issued a supoena to actively participate in any eaves dropping, but apparently it is possible.
In my opinion this is an issue that can effect anybody that is involved in the online community. We never know who is watching; perhaps this is a good thing that the government can keep an eye on its citizens. Who knows what kind of information is floating around on the internet, especially in online conversations. Chat rooms, AIM, Skype, Meebo, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and now even Myspace and Facebook. All these websites have the capabilities to share immense amounts of information at one time. A little peek at the online world, I think would not hurt everyone as much as we think, eavesdropping and tapping is usually confidential and private. i think that Skype has been put in a very bad situation by its users opinions, and that should not be the case
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/10/02/skype.eavesdropping.ap/index.html
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