Microsoft (News - Alert)-owned Skype is in hot water after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks created controversy news that the VoIP provider may have been feeding its user’s data to the National Security Agency (News - Alert) through a program called PRISM.

The latest news hitting Skype is that the high tech company allegedly may have also developed a program called Project Chess, which purportedly made it easier for government agencies to obtain data from users.

How private are user’s “audio, video, chat, and file transfers" when using Skype (News - Alert)? Is their data safe from the prying eyes of the CIA or any other government groups for that matter?

These concerns aren’t particularly new. As soon as Skype was acquired by Microsoft in 2011, privacy experts publicly wondered what the deal would mean for user’s data. In fact, as far back as June of 2012, questions were raised about Skype’s vulnerabilities when it came to wiretapping.

Skype’s response? “Skype co-operates with law enforcement agencies as much as is legally and technically possible.”

Having worked as a VoIP expert for many years, there’s several points in particular that concern me about this bit of news:

Data in the cloud

First, is the fact that Skype and many other VoIP providers store data, such as voice and contacts lists on their servers. This not only makes it easy for them to share, but easier for someone else to break into.

Skype didn’t always store this data on their servers, and for a reason. That makes it readily available to prying eyes of hackers – or in our case, the government.

Ads

Additionally, Skype did not use ads pre-Microsoft. The issue here is not only that ads interrupt the user’s experience, but that ads mean that a company will be held captive to ad networks or brands that will want and need their user’s data. This is where much heavier user tracking comes in and where a company can hold your demographic, location, list of interests, and browsing habits hostage.

End-to-end encryption

Just this month Ars Technica, during an investigation, found that user’s texts are not protected by end-to-end encryption, and that the company regularly scans messages for signs of scams or suspicious data (“automated scanning” called SmartScreen).

Though this scanning is for obviously good use, like keeping their users safe from scammers and phishing, this ultimately means that the corporate behemoth has the technology necessary for what could essentially be considered as spying.

VPN’s

Think you’re safe if you use a VPN to hide your online whereabouts? Think again.

One of the government documents leaked to the media specifies that users who use a VPN may make themselves more of a target for surveillance because they are willfully and purposely hiding their location. Thus, this person “will not be treated as a United States person, unless such person can be positively identified as such or the nature or circumstances of the person’s communications give rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person,” and as a result there are loopholes generated that allow the user to be hacked.

Closed User Groups

When you’re dealing with apps like Skype that use closed user groups, what this really means is that the whole call stays on the servers of the app that is hosting that call.

Safer Alternatives

What are your alternatives to Skype if you don’t want to take the risk of any of our private conversations and texts? You could include Vonage (News - Alert), Vbuzzer, Go2meeting, and my VoIP startup, RingCredible.

RingCredible Users, along with other smaller calling alternatives are safer explicitly because of the following:

• Your data isn’t stored in the cloud.
• These apps do not used closed user groups.
• RingCredible and a few other apps do not use ads, and we do not collect your data.
• Other parties do not need to download the application to talk – and the other caller will never have to know you’re calling using a VoIP alternative.
• We’re not owned by bigger corporations, which may have ulterior motives and their own privacy rules and regulations that might not be privacy-friendly. Smaller companies set the rules based on their own ethical concerns.

Go “VoIP Indie” & Choose Overseas

Whereas Skype may be an easy way to make calls, the corporation may not have a consumer’s best interests at heart. Skype may had the characteristics of a secure and private application in its heyday, when it was a small and independent startup. However, it’s becoming clear that since it was acquired by Microsoft, it may have had a major overhaul where privacy was sacrificed for the sake of the bottom line of this purchase.

A user’s best bet is to go back to the basics and choose a smaller VoIP startup, without closed user groups. Startups still have the great benefits you initially got from Skype – inexpensive long distance calling – but with added benefit of keeping your data safe and private, and where it belongs.