Ride the Lightning

Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

How Secure Are Your Skype Calls?

January 30, 2013

Lawyers, especially solo and small firm lawyers, have flocked to Skype as a great way to save money. But how secure are your Skype calls?

The BBC recently reported that Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and 43 other groups have signed a letter asking Microsoft (which owns Skype) to reveal details about what information is stored and government efforts to access it.

Google and Twitter have been fairly transparent on this subject, but not Microsoft - which is considering the request.

What information are the privacy advocates seeking?

  • Details of how many requests for data each country's government has made and the percentage that the firm complies with.
  • Information about exactly what information Microsoft keeps itself.
  • Microsoft's own analysis about the current ability of third-parties to intercept conversations.
  • The policy its staff has for dealing with disclosure requests.

Skype last referenced privacy issues last July saying that calls between two parties did not flow through its datacenters meaning it would not have access to the video or audio. Those calls are also encrypted which would make it hard for anyone listening to make sense of the data.

But Microsoft did say that group calls using more than two computers do pass through its servers (to aggregate the media streams) and that text-based messages were also stored on its computers for up to 30 days in order to make sure they were synchronized across users' devices.

Based on what we KNOW today, most experts have signed off on one-to-one calls via Skype. But I would be wary of group calls – once data is stored on a company's servers, I am leery of statements about when it is removed (and whether it might be shared at the legal request of a government). Lawyers in particular should avoid group calls involving client information. And everyone should keep an eye on Microsoft's response to the request for transparency – it may well be that things have changed since last July.

And when it comes to privacy, things rarely change for the better.

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