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Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

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Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#31

Post by human20190310 »

darkcha0s wrote: post #19

>Although Skype's website says that the company may analyze audio of phone calls that a user wants to translate in order to improve the chat platform's services, it does not say some of this analysis will be done by humans. I'm sorry, but isn't this just nitpicking? Just because they don't say how it's analyzed doesn't make this a scandal.

It's not nitpicking. If the word "analyze" was chosen because the word "eavesdrop" would result in users leaving the platform, and eavesdropping is what they're actually doing, then they're obscuring their actions with a euphemism.

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#32

Post by swiley »

jchw wrote: post #13
giancarlostoro wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once they ditched p2p the quality derailed. The worst thing was the Skype mobile app trying to sync on my phone. It never seemed to cache convos well enough, it also would not sync properly between devices in regards to notifications. Also Skype would try to pull in my entire history. I feel like some P2P concepts stuck deeply within Skype and thats what left it so awkward.

The mobile app is probably why they ditched P2P. As much as I love old Skype, it existed in a pre-mobile world, and never translated well to phones... and in fact, most P2P platforms won't translate well to phones, since you at least need centralization for the push notifications. Such is life. Though to be clear, yeah, it didn't really fix the mobile app. It felt just as broken up to the moment I uninstalled Skype.

>most P2P platforms won't translate well to phones, since you at least need centralization for the push notifications. Such is life

This isn't a fact of life, this is a flaw in the API of most popular mobile OSes. Open source comunnity maintaned operating systems have solved the problem of providing a network service for handling push notifications (local or not) multiple times now and these companies have refused to implement them because it makes it much easier to create an ecosystem around their crap.

This gives them controll and controll can be traded for money, it has aboslutely nothing to do with technology. That's just life

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#33

Post by auiya »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #23

If it's not end to end encrypted--and by that I mean using audited, open source cryptography--you should assume that the full contents may be made public at any time. And you should basically assume that metadata will be made public no matter what you do.

And if it IS end-to-end encrypted, you should assume that the full contents may be made public at any time. Companies don't only record contents of communications over the wire you know, eventually they have to be decrypted on the end points.

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#35

Post by google2342 »

_Understated_ wrote: post #22
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, you should realize anything that companies say is done with "AI" is probably in some part done by poorly paid contractors. And not always on the analysis end, for example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2019/05/28/25-of-go... There's something incredibly dystopian by using humans as part of a process you literally tell people is entirely machines.

Haha, I never realised it was that immature. As an aside: Being a tech I have been asked numerous times by non-techs "What actually is AI?" I usually answer "a lot of if-statements" :)

That's not a fair characterization. These contractors are mostly used for quality assurance. Once you've trained your model (which is not just if statements), you might you send a few thousand examples to raters to judge the true quality of your model.

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#36

Post by [deleted] »

azinman2 wrote: post #27
_Understated_ wrote: post #4

I think we have to assume at this point that all online communication tools owned by for-profit mega-corps are compromised and that they can and do listen/analyse everything. I have long assumed that with Whatsapp... I honestly don't believe that it's as secure as it used to be: Facebook'a raison d'etre is all about data gathering. Also, when I read a WhatsApp message on my phone, it's unencrypted as I see it on the…

Compromised by what? Whom? Listening / analyzing for what? These stories are really overblown. All these companies are doing it in order to make voice recognition better. It’s simply not possible to do with some QA... you have to know what people are actually saying vs what the system recognized.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#37

Post by monster99 »

That's kind of the point, the upper class is at war with the masses, hear it in their own words:

Zbigniew Brezinski, former national security advisor of the United states:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."

https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas-Technetroni...

Book - governments not to work for the people:

http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#38

Post by jmull »

human20190310 wrote: post #31
darkcha0s wrote: post #19

>Although Skype's website says that the company may analyze audio of phone calls that a user wants to translate in order to improve the chat platform's services, it does not say some of this analysis will be done by humans. I'm sorry, but isn't this just nitpicking? Just because they don't say how it's analyzed doesn't make this a scandal.

It's not nitpicking. If the word "analyze" was chosen because the word "eavesdrop" would result in users leaving the platform, and eavesdropping is what they're actually doing , then they're obscuring their actions with a euphemism.

Well, eavesdrop means secretly listening to a conversation. If they communicate it in a reasonable way, it's not eavesdropping.

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#39

Post by jasonmorton »

Can anyone recommend a good open-source chat and call solution? I'm looking for something I can run on my own server to support friends and family, with an iOS and Android app. It doesn't have to support more than one or two video calls at a time. I figure this is sadly the long term solution.

Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls

#40

Post by dmix »

So does Twillio... not surprising at all when there's no encryption and they need to debug real phone calls routed all over the world which is not an easy task.

As long as they're only spot checking and not browsing through any one persons calls for no reason I don't see why it's a big deal. It's mostly business lines anyway.

That said, they should have some protocols and controls in place for listening to any calls, with solid paper trails. Every company like that should have a privacy manager to direct and monitor these measures. They could even document/blog about their work on privacy for marketing purposes (assuming the executives are aware of just how in-demand privacy has become these days).

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