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NSA Has Been Tapping Into Skype

We should have known.  You should have known.  Every time Microsoft takes over an operation – security is compromised.  This happened when Skype was taken over by the Software giant.  Before Skype was nearly impossible to “tap” because it was a peer to peer service and was encrypted.  Once Microsoft took over, they decided that Skype needed to increase Skype’s reliance on the Microsoft-owned “supernodes.”

Then comes May…  ARS technical – a security website (http://arstechnica.com) revealed good reason to fear that the once “untappable” system became vulnerable.  Their research found evidence that Microsoft has access to the unencrypted contents of Skype chats. You can see that information here: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get-end-to-end-encryption-think-again/

-  in a nutshell – they sent Skype messages containing specific links.  Those links were “clicked on” by machines that had IP addresses belonging to Microsoft.

According to the Guardian, Microsoft helped enable the NSA to intercept Skype conversations.  From their article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data/print) they also state that:
• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;
• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;
It does not take an intelligence expert to connect the dots.  I firmly believe the sole purpose of Microsoft taking over Skype was for the intelligence community to be able to monitor the conversations.  Do I have absolute proof?  No.  Does it all make sense looking at the situation now?  Yes.

Whatever you do – stay safe!

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