Another grave danger to Skype users

Be careful when you are making use of Skype one of the most popular voice over Internet protocol service, your Skye account can divulge your personal records or allow others tap your downloaded confidential files. This is a fact finding report of a research conducted by a computer science professor, Keith Ross, at Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Brooklyn and the article reflects facts on research.

You can prevent others watching your IP address, hide your IP address by employing a proxy server. However, Skype users are advised not keep your Skype account open for a long time as people can hack your IP address, in fact you need not show interest in attending a call, yet when hackers make a call, your IP address will be opened up to them. These particulars got exposed when Mr. Ross experimented for a period of 16 days.

Certain parameters were included in testing Skype application, the Skype application was kept in the active state, it was run continuously. In addition to this, for every one hour, user’s IP address was changed and researchers found it easy to track every changing IP address on the Skype. As and when IP address were changed by employing proxies, it did  hide your IP, .i.e. showing different ip addresses. Researchers could not only identify geographic location but it could even rightly identify postcode. People who adapt to Skype handle, will find their names more visible and they are widely visible on the social networking sites such as Facebook. Skype handle names reflect to personality and behaviour of users and sometimes brand images of companies they own.
Another grave danger to Skype users is, an intruder can entire your Skype network and map your IP address, a hacker can look for larger files which are downloads of users. Large files can be downloads between peer-to-peer system where pirated movies and music are done by employment of Bit Torrent software. Any hacker can easily pick up downloaded data quietly, hence you will have to hide your IP from intruders.

Microsoft owns Skype services and the company is highly concerned on the security systems involved in the system, and company spokesman say that the privacy of Skype users, is valued and the research and development department is committed to make changes on Skype products. Adrian Asher, the company’s chief information security officer, accepted to a point that Skype users who are connected with each other may be able to identify each other IP address and company is making efforts to hide your IP address and not to get accessed with each other without establishing a call between caller and called; Research conducted by Mr Ross conclude that it is advisable not to keep Skype application running all time, and in addition try to install Skype handle, which differs from user name.