Like Google, Skype’s a great service, but their flexible ethics when it comes to user’s privacy lacks the same quality of excellence. We shortly mentioned that Skype’s user agreement includes wire-tapping provisos, but now they’ve gone the whole hog: their Chinese service includes a special chat censorship feature.

It doesn’t work over VoIP, which would be a mean bit of technology, but it does work in Skype chat, real-time filtering hot bed topics of potential political dissent. The chat censorship comes from a partnership with Chinese internet portal Tom. Needless to say, Chinese with a vested interest in the free exchange of ideas aren’t happy:

I don’t know or even can’t image any government enforces a software to do text filtering unless they do self-policing first. Skype is misled by Tom, the useless partner. Basically Skype is different from Google or Yahoo online service, its standalone software.

Geeks in China ever regard Skype as the hero to play important role to conduct secure communication. They are very disappointed now to see Skype join the evil business list. Sigh!

It’s probably hard to schedule a lunch date in Tienanmen Square over Skype Chat.

Skype ignores users concerned about China censorship [RConversation]

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