very interesting if somewhat unsurprising report generated by citizenlab. basically Skype is riddled with spyware that filter naughty words out and instead puts the naughty words on a server so that The Man can monitor your every move homeboy. Well I never. China? Censorship? I guess the surprising thing is the depths that they will go to to monitor your words. Major Findings of this report are as follows:
• The full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have communicated with TOM-Skype users, are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and if present, the resulting data are uploaded and stored on servers in China.
• These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are stored on insecure publicly-accessible web servers together with the encryption key required to
decrypt the data.
• The captured messages contain specific keywords relating to sensitive political topics
• Our analysis suggests that the surveillance is not solely keyword-driven. Many of the captured messages contain words that are too common for extensive logging, suggesting that there may be criteria, such as specific usernames, that determine whether messages are
captured by the system.
The only surprise is that they were so sloppy – in the west we do this stuff as well but its cleverer than this crude method. If anyone wants to know anything about you be you Chinese or British or American then they already do. Skype and China are more crude but not less sinister.