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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe the client forwards the URL to a Microsoft service which accesses it.
If it did this, then it can forward the chat conversation as well
Checking URLs passed in messages isn't incompatible with secure communication. It's easy enough to look at a text message that's going to be sent and break it into parts (URL and non-URL). Encrypt point-to-point the non-URL parts, and encrypt the URL parts such that the central servers can read them (and verify that they're not pointing to bad stuff, which is a very valuable service to provide to the vast number of r…
There's a good way to do this though - give the users a local URL classifier and push updates to it. Then the client software is free to block dangerous URLs by default without hurting anyone's privacy. This works, and is used by many AV companies.
In fact, because of the way the system is centralized they could be sure the updates would reach users before another message did - providing the same level of safety as scanning the users' messages for them.
"You are correct, Skype chats and conversations are encrypted. Your chat can only be read when you sign in using your Skype name and password. Not even Skype or Microsoft has access to your chat history. "
You can see the full transcript here: http://pastebin.com/bbiSWtrz
Checking URLs passed in messages isn't incompatible with secure communication. It's easy enough to look at a text message that's going to be sent and break it into parts (URL and non-URL). Encrypt point-to-point the non-URL parts, and encrypt the URL parts such that the central servers can read them (and verify that they're not pointing to bad stuff, which is a very valuable service to provide to the vast number of r…
"Checking URLs passed in messages isn't incompatible with secure communication" I guess that depends on your definition of "security," and perhaps of "practicality." Where I'm from (i.e. a grad student whose research is on practical secure multiparty computation), a practical system for checking URLs in a privacy-preserving fashion is still very much a research topic. "It's easy enough to look at a text message that'…
Which "betrayal" is worse -- Skype being able to look at messages, or compromised systems?
In terms of implementation, it's interesting to think about the design space.