Savvy Internet users in China began avoiding the version of Skype offered by its Chinese partner two years ago, but news it filtered and recorded text messages has sparked new worries about the global firm's commitment to privacy.
The U.S.-owned Web communications firm faces a backlash at home and in China for apparently allowing core principles to be compromised in order to meet the demands of Chinese censors, analysts warned.
"We may never know whether some of those people whose conversations were logged have gone to jail or have had their lives ruined in various ways as a result of this," said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet expert at Hong Kong University.
"This is a big blow to Skype's credibility, despite the fact that Skype executives are downplaying it as not such a big deal."
Skype, with its promises of total security and privacy, has long been popular with Chinese looking to keep their conversations away from the prying eyes of government censors.
But the eBay-owned firm had to apologise on Thursday after a report revealed that its Chinese service not only monitors text chats with sensitive keywords, which it had earlier admitted, but also stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could easily be accessed by anybody.
Skype added however that only messaging conversations where one or more people were using the Chinese software were affected.
The U.S.-owned Web communications firm faces a backlash at home and in China for apparently allowing core principles to be compromised in order to meet the demands of Chinese censors, analysts warned.
"We may never know whether some of those people whose conversations were logged have gone to jail or have had their lives ruined in various ways as a result of this," said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet expert at Hong Kong University.
"This is a big blow to Skype's credibility, despite the fact that Skype executives are downplaying it as not such a big deal."
Skype, with its promises of total security and privacy, has long been popular with Chinese looking to keep their conversations away from the prying eyes of government censors.
But the eBay-owned firm had to apologise on Thursday after a report revealed that its Chinese service not only monitors text chats with sensitive keywords, which it had earlier admitted, but also stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could easily be accessed by anybody.
Skype added however that only messaging conversations where one or more people were using the Chinese software were affected.
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