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Skype - Free phone service or evil spyware?

Discussion in 'All other topics' started by stubar, May 2, 2005.

  1. stubar

    stubar Member

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    Hi
    I've been using Skype for about a month and it's great. Long distance, gaming ect. all no problem. I told my uncle in Canada about it and after using it for a while he sent me a note:
    "... a friend of mine's son work's in IT at The University of Waterloo and tells me Skype in one of the top three
    they are NOT allowing the University or the students to use.

    The problem appears to be they are spying on activity and this is not good. So I'm going to remove from my system (tells me the only way you can successfully get rid of is to have the hard drive reformatted."
    Anybody heard anything similar?
     
  2. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    a friend of mine is using it so i called him but was out, will know in a couple of hrs. probably don't need to reformat, try ad-aware se & spybot s&d to see if find anything in relation to Skype but 1st run ccleaner from www.ccleaner.com to clean out your cookies, history & whatnot.
     
  3. geestar20

    geestar20 Active member

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    I use skype quit often and have never heard of any such thing, I also use adaware and spybotsearch and destroy and both programs have never reported any such threat.

    Maybe university's are loosing money do to this free telephony service???
     
  4. neojapan

    neojapan Regular member

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    I have used skype a couple of times and nothing has happened yet.I also ran ad-aware and the microsoft beta spyware(or whatever its called)and it didn't appear.
     
  5. john4582

    john4582 Member

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    i am qite new to this but my computer has got spyware and one of them is from skype i have never used it before but somehow i have it and cant get rid of it. i noticed the problem when it changed my homepage and now i cant get it back gone through control panel but no joy also ran spybot cleared everything it brought up still the f**king same any help would be great thanks in advance.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2005
  6. Nephilim

    Nephilim Moderator Staff Member

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    I've been using Skype for over a year now and regularly run AdAware/Spybot S&D and they've never turned up any sort of spyware hits related to Skype. Although possible, I find it unlikely that neither the Lavasoft or Spybot folks would've missed something like that with Skype become so popular.

    Do you have any references to validate the spyware claim?
     
  7. CJC

    CJC Regular member

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    Hey

    I deal with Adware and Spyware as part of my job every day, i also run Skype on all 6 PC's here, plus we run it on all the Office PC's at work.

    Not once have i seen any Adware or Spyware in this program.

    Just as Neph said, Do you have any references to validate the spyware claim?

    CJC
     
  8. stubar

    stubar Member

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    No references, just hearsay. I posted my uncles concerns as I couldn't find anything related and I wanted to hear what my Afterdawn buddies had to say :eek:)
    Cheers chaps

    Stuart
     
  9. Buik

    Buik Regular member

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    Update. Version 1.2.0.48 is already out as we type.

    Has anyone tried the "Skype Answering Machine" plug-in?
    SAM - Skype Answering Machine 1.0.4.0
    Try this link: http://www.download.com/3002-2349_4-10393577.html?tag=dir
    Or just go to WWW.Download.com and search.

    Kazaa, who is running the SKYPE project is not running it for free. That is why they have the "Skype out" & "Skype in" features.

    As for anti-spyware programs, may I suggest "Spyware Doctor 3.2"? It found a lot of stuff the aforementioned two did not the first time I ran it. It is free for personal use also.

    TC

     
  10. regor

    regor Regular member

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    in case any care... I suspect the IT position at EDU as well as any enterprise/business class network is the bandwidth usage associated with the p2p calls; skype also uses random ports for inbound calls which can look like worm activity. Just not practical for EDU/enterprise networks who pay through the nose for their available bandwidth; in the case of business class networks the cost is directly proportional to e2e and other ebiz trade/bookings/billings and business applications that are potentially compromised with availabilty and performance hits - huge cost. The other angle is capacity - does it make sense to increase capacity for skype calls??? probably not unless it was to replace desk phones; but business class voip services would do that, not skype.

    just thought I'd throw that in.
     
  11. vans12

    vans12 Regular member

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    The 2 reasons your buddy probaly said they can't have skype is

    1. uses to much of the schools bandwith

    2. school loses phone money.
     

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