Skype

Skype is software that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and to toll-free numbers are free, while calls to other landlines and cell phones can be made for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing.
It was created by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a team of software developers based in Tallinn, Estonia. The Skype Group has its headquarters in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn, Tartu, Stockholm, Prague, and San Jose.
Skype has experienced rapid growth in popular usage since the launch of its services. It was acquired by eBay in September 2005 for $2.6 billion.

SkypeIn

SkypeIn allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialed by regular phone subscribers to a local Skype phone number; local numbers are available for Australia, Brazil, Chile,] Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand Poland, Romania, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the United States. A Skype user anywhere can have local numbers in any of these countries, with calls to the number charged at the same rate as calls to fixed lines in the country. Some jurisdictions, including France and Norway, forbid the registration of their telephone numbers to anyone without a physical presence or citizenship in the country.
Videoconferencing
Videoconferencing was introduced in January 2006 for the Windows and Mac OS X platform clients. Skype 2.0 for Linux, which was released on March 13, 2008, also features support for videoconferencing.
Skype for Windows, starting with version 3.6.0.216, supports "High Quality Video" with quality and features (e.g. full-screen and screen-in-screen modes) similar to that of mid-range videoconferencing systems

Skype on mobile devices

On April 24, 2008, Skype announced that they offer Skype on around 50 mobile phones. On October 29, 2007, Skype launched its own mobile phone under the brand name 3 Skypephone, which runs a BREW OS.
Skype is available for the N800 and N810 Internet Tablets.
Skype is available for the PSP (PlayStation Portable) Slim and Lite when you download the 3.90 firmware update, but you need a microphone that connects to the PSP 2000 headphones.
Skype is available on mobile devices running Windows Mobile. The official Symbian version is currently under development. Official Skype support is available on Symbian and Java as part of X-Series together with mobile operator 3.
Other companies produce dedicated Skype phones which connect via WiFi. Third party developers, such as Nimbuzz and Fring, have allowed Skype to run in parallel with several other competing VoIP/IM networks in any Symbian or Java environment. Nimbuzz have made Skype available to BlackBerry users.

Security features

Secure communication is a feature of Skype; encryption cannot be disabled, and is invisible to the user. Skype reportedly uses non-proprietary, widely trusted encryption techniques: RSA for key negotiation and the Advanced Encryption Standard to encrypt conversations. Skype provides an uncontrolled registration system for users with absolutely no proof of identity. This permits users to use the system without revealing their identity to other users. It is trivially easy, of course, for anybody to set up an account using any name; the displayed caller's name is no guarantee of authenticity.

Skype's source code is not open source, and therefore cannot be inspected by the general public - including many security specialists - for back doors that can be exploited by hackers or government agents. Security specialist Bruce Schneier said in one of his monthly Crypto-Gram newsletters, that "In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades."

Security concerns

A third party paper analyzing the security and methodology of Skype was presented at Black Hat Europe 2006. It analyzed Skype and made these observations:

- Skype keeps chatting on the network, even when idle (even for non-supernodes. May be used for NAT traversal)
- Assumes a 'blind trust' of anything else speaking Skype
- Ability to build a parallel Skype network
- Skype makes it hard to enforce a (corporate) security policy
- No way to know if there is or will be a 'backdoor'
- Skype has been found to access BIOS data to identify individual computers and provide DRM protection for plug-ins.
- Skype is owned by eBay, whose privacy policy is perhaps the least protective of customers of any large corporation. eBay claims it goes above and beyond what it is required to do by law, seeking out and giving police all the information it stores about users excluding some financial data, for which they require a subpoena.

Skype service issues

- There have been complaints about Skype's poor customer support. As of June 2007, Skype did not provide a way to contact customer support, offering indirect assistance through its web portal only. There have also been criticisms of Skype blocking and disabling customer accounts from using the SkypeOut service.
- While available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (i386 platform) operating systems, there is no Skype version for the Palm OS, used in mobile devices like the Treo 700p smartphone.
- Skype has been criticized for bugs and delays in its Linux version.
- Users of Skype on Mac OS X report poor audio quality when connecting to Mac/Mobile clients, with newer audio engines showing more and more problems.[citation needed Audio quality when connecting from Mac to Windows seems to be acceptable.
- SkypeOut does not support storing or (automatically) calling numbers with extensions. Instead, a user must call the number (without the extension), wait for the call to connect and then manually enter the extension. This means that many business customers in practice need a separate contact list that includes extensions, causing the built-in contact list to be of little use. This is by many customers considered a fairly basic feature, and other phone services typically support it by allowing numbers to contain a symbol to represent a pause, as in "1-800-123-4567 x54321" or "1-800-123-4567,,,54321" where 54321 is the extension.

Compliance with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act

The FCC has interpreted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act as requiring digital phone networks to allow wiretapping in the presence of an FBI warrant, in the same way as traditional phone service. Skype is not yet compliant with the act and has, so far, stated that it does not plan to comply.

Censorship in China

Skype is one of many companies (others include AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco) which has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China. Niklas Zennström, chief executive to Skype, told reporters that its joint venture partner in China is operating in compliance with domestic law. "TOM Online had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing," said Zennström. "Those are the regulations," he said. "I may like or not like the laws and regulations to operate businesses in the UK or Germany or the US, but if I do business there I choose to comply with those laws and regulations. I can try to lobby to change them, but I need to comply with them. China in that way is not different.

Since late September, users in China trying to download the Skype software are redirected to the TOM site from which a modified Chinese version can be downloaded. Activists in China are warned about the possibility that TOM's versions have or will have more trojan capability.

Company timeline of events

2002

- September 2002: investment from Draper Investment Company.

2003

- April 2003: Skype.com and Skype.net domain names registered.
- August 2003: First public beta version released.

2005

- September 2005: SkypeOut banned in South China.
- October 2005: eBay purchased Skype (Oct 14).
- December 2005: videotelephony introduced.

2006

- April 2006: Number of registered users reaches 100 million.
- October 2006: Skype 2.0 for Mac is released, the first full release of Skype with video for Macintosh.
- December 2006: Skype announces a new pricing structure as of January 18, 2007, with connection fees for all SkypeOut calls. Skype 3.0 for Windows is released.

2007

- March 2007: Skype 3.1 is released, adding some new features, including Skype Find and Skype Prime. Skype also released a 3.2 beta with a new feature called Send Money which allows users to send money via PayPal from one Skype user to another.
- August 2007: Skype 3.5 for Windows released with additions such as video in mood, inclusion of video content in chat, call transfer to another person or a group, auto-redial.
- August 15, 2007: Skype 2.7.0.49 (beta) for Mac OS X released adding availability of contacts in the Mac Address Book to the Skype contact list, auto redial, contact groups, public chat creation, and an in-window volume slider to the call window.
- August 16 / August 17, 2007: Skype users unable to connect to full Skype network in many countries. Skype reports the system-wide crash was the result of exceptional number of logins after a Windows patch reboot ("Patch Tuesday").
- November 2007: Skype users are set to lose their 020 7 numbers after 20 December 2007.

2008

- January 30, 2008: Skype released for the Sony PSP hand-held gaming system.
- March 13, 2008: Skype 2.0 for Linux released with support for videoconferencing.
- July 09, 2008: