From my sources inside of Skype, everyone is leaving, and Microsoft might be preparing to sell it. No wonder that nothing's changing.
How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
81–90 of 119 posts
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#82I've been looking for a Skype alternative since the security of Skype was weakened after it was acquired by Microsoft. I've had my account stolen multiple times because their support has changed the primary e-mail address of my account, I had to use the same method the social engineers used to get my account back. Since then I've avoided sharing anything slightly sensitive over Skype, as chat history is synced with a…
You should definitely consider the matrix protocol (https://matrix.org) that is used with riot (https://riot.im).
Matrix allows for a complete decentralization and both the the protocol and the client are open source. There are even many other clients as matrix also works with for example weechat.
One of it's biggest strength are the support for bridges to other messengers like slack, irc and gitter. I personally haven't yet tried group calls or video chat, but considering that those also use end to end encryption just as messages and attachement and that this encryption has been fully audited, I could barely be any less hyped about all this. As the author of this article pointed out, all of skype's flaws are more or less inherent of big centralized messengers and this is exactly what we get around with matrix. It's really amazing in what a great state it already is. Sure there is still lots of work left, but to me it appears to be the currently most promising project.
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#83Last year I discovered a bug that allowed you to call someone's phone and remotely activate it's camera and mic by disconnecting the call while it was ringing - the target's device would simply call you back as if it were a dropped call.
They fixed it, but boy that was a doozy.
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#84I've been looking for a Skype alternative since the security of Skype was weakened after it was acquired by Microsoft. I've had my account stolen multiple times because their support has changed the primary e-mail address of my account, I had to use the same method the social engineers used to get my account back. Since then I've avoided sharing anything slightly sensitive over Skype, as chat history is synced with a…
I too switched from Skype to Wire, but it has been a challenge to convince other people to move to Wire. It has further been frustrating that it almost seems like the people running Wire have been trying to avoid marketing or letting people know that Wire exists. That makes me wonder about their long term intentions (and if I'll lose credibility with my contacts that finally migrate to Wire just before wire vanishes…
I wouldn't say that they've avoided marketing, they're active on Twitter. I made the switch over a single day by sending a message to all my contacts informing them about it and then proceeded to delete all contacts from my list. The people I speak to regularly were quick to switch, others have switched over the months. I still have to use Skype from time to time for conference calls with certain people, but I avoid it as much as I can and don't consider any conversation I have on Skype as private.
Wire has also open-sourced their clients and a lot of components, so even if they were to vanish as a company, all work is not lost.
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#85Lync (Skype for business) has been The Worst support that I've ever dealt with.
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#86Mods removed "(They don't)" or similar from the title. Before they did this I think it more accurately reflected the intent of the original author as this is the prominent subtitle on the page. Without this it makes the article sounds much less interesting.
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#87Sadly, Skype is still used a lot. More than half of the emails I receive with a next step of communication proposal come suggesting Skype. The only way to beat it would be to have another communication solution which can be used as simple as Skype is (for any age, technical literacy, etc.).
This. People talk about various alternatives, but I haven't seen one. The requirements are pretty simple 1) Chat and group chat (persistent) 2) Simple file transfer and image posting in chat 3) Good quality voice calls, video calls and group voice calls 4) Apps for android/iOS with shared contact lists 5) Single application for all of the above (to enable a single group set, switching between group chat and group cal…
There's also
8) the phone line to skype voip bridge
9) a static phone number for your voip that you can answer anywhere in the world
10) reasonably affordable subscriptions for the phone line to skype bridge.
11) Simple hardware you can use as a phone by simply logging into to skype
I know there's alternatives, but it has served me quite well for several years and changing means having to buy new VOIP phones.
Skype has its warts, huge ones, like very misleading errors.
Just today I got an email: "Your Skype Number will expire on" even while it has auto renew set to on.
Then after login it says "your skype number has been cancelled". No it has not been cancelled.
What ended up being the problem was that the skype database no longer knew how-to bill from paypal. Even while it had used that for another subscription the other day. There was also no bounced payment, it just forgot.
I knew when I read "cancelled" that it meant something else from earlier similar problems. Skype is quite messy and every time I get an email "Skype has improved XYZ" I do wonder what it ended up breaking. I know I should find an alternative, but as long as it sort of works...
These type of security issues do make me wonder again though.
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
3) Is not true for me though, it's awful mostly, but that's my pet peeve (all coders assume everyone else is on a 1000mbit connection as well all the time) and MS is really bad at making anything work on bad connections. Office 365 isn't even getting past the 'wait while loading' while Google drive/docs is completely usable when I have a bad connection (which is often). The software that was written for bad connectio…
WhatsApp has had video for a while now... I'm guessing on your slow connection the update is still pending...
For me, whatsapp video doesn't work at all. When I use it with my girlfriend (I have iOS, she has a new Android phone) her video has a real bad quality while I can see hers perfectly fine. Voice quality is good as well. Video quality is perfect on Duo and Skype and we're both on WiFi, so that's not the issue.
Don't know if it's due to the geography (across countries in Europe), but I couldn't find a solution yet. Calls work fine as well.
I'd love to get rid of Duo but have to keep using it as I don't want to use Skype on my phone.
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#89I've been looking for a Skype alternative since the security of Skype was weakened after it was acquired by Microsoft. I've had my account stolen multiple times because their support has changed the primary e-mail address of my account, I had to use the same method the social engineers used to get my account back. Since then I've avoided sharing anything slightly sensitive over Skype, as chat history is synced with a…
Why don't you try Jitsi? https://jitsi.org/
You can also try https://meet.jit.si/
Works directly in the browser (thanks to WebRTC), nothing to install, no need to create an accound.
There's group video chat, screen sharing, youtube video sharing, collaborative text editing,...
And it's free software :)
Re: How Skype fixes security vulnerabilities
#90Sadly, Skype is still used a lot. More than half of the emails I receive with a next step of communication proposal come suggesting Skype. The only way to beat it would be to have another communication solution which can be used as simple as Skype is (for any age, technical literacy, etc.).
WebRTC is almost there, and I think in the next few years most such emails will have a link to a WebRTC based service. It is easier than Skype really. Just click a link and it starts a video call. There are jsut a few browser compatibility issues that need sorting out.
The only problem right now is that there's no WebRTC support on iOS :(