Ride the Lightning

Skype Does NOT Provide Secure Communications

June 3, 2013

Over the weekend, I read yet again about how many lawyers are using Skype in their law practice. As a recent Ars Technica article pointed out, there is a widely held misapprehension, even by experts, that Skype provides impenetrable end-to-end encryption.

In fact, the Microsoft-owned company regularly scans message contents for signs of fraud, and company managers may log the results indefinitely. And this can only happen if Microsoft can convert the messages into human-readable form at will.

Since Microsoft acquired Skype, the network design has been overhauled. Gone are the peer-to-peer "supernodes" made up of users with sufficient amounts of bandwidth and processing power – now there are some 10,000 Linux machines hosted by Microsoft. The decentralization that had been one of Skype's hallmarks was replaced with a much more centralized network,in which messages are easier to monitor.

Ars Technica also conducted an experiment proving that Skype does indeed peek into messages. Read the article and determine for yourself whether Skype is an appropriate vehicle for attorney confidential communications.