Be careful what you write & say on Skype!

[dmeyer]

I honestly never used Skype. I just never saw any benefit to use it. I am an mmo gamer (on the side) but I use a product called Ventrillo for that. I have an Xbox 360 and a friend clued me in on how MS Kinect being used to spy on you, it is even in the EULA;



So I never bought one. Paranoid? Hell yes, I am paranoid. I don't want pics of me in the buff and some nerdy geek back at MS HQ posting them to his friends. I am not wearing the aluminum foil cap just yet. But if I sit down in front of a laptop with a cam I make sure there isn't something on the wall behind me that could make me look stupid or incriminate me in some way. Don't get me wrong cameras are a cheap useful tool for security, if they are used properly. But I recall over in Michigan quite a few years back someone got a camera into the Detroit Lions locker room and posted pic of the players in their birthday suits.

So by not using Skype what am I missing?

This paranoia isn't entirely unfounded. Wasn't there a guy who hacked into a bunch of college girls' computers a few years back?

On a related note, I installed remote desktop software on my girl friends computer (at her bequest of course). One day while checking that everything was working fine I switched on her web camera and ended up being greeted with a very pleasant view of her bum as she'd just got out the shower. It was unintentional but still scary.

Its not inconceivable that somebody from a "trusted" institution can take advantage of that trust. I highly doubt Microsoft would ever do it, but I could imagine a disgruntled employee or "hacker"/"cracker" exploiting a flaw or something. We can be super grateful for those adorable webcam lights.

[SteveRiley]

Worth reading:

http://www.zdnet.com/is-microsoft-re...es-7000015388/

Summary: checking for redirects to known malware sites isn't exactly new, and has been a feature of SmartScreen for some time now. Note, especially, that the HEAD method used by the checking procedure does not retrieve content. Note also that Hesse appears to have made at least one incorrect claim: HTTP URLs are just as likely to be checked as HTTPS.

[SteveRiley]

This paranoia isn't entirely unfounded. Wasn't there a guy who hacked into a bunch of college girls' computers a few years back?

In 2010, a Pennsylvania high school did this intentionally.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ebcam-at-home/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...eu-of-lawsuit/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...webcam-spying/