Fair point, but equally Skype was an independent company when it developed its protocol, and although Microsoft hasn't fixed it, its not really their fault.

It might not be their fault, but it sure is their responsibility now.

See that link hanbam put up? This has been known for months already with no patch. Hopefully this pushes them to make an actual fix.

I doubt it.. I brought this up on Skype forum and the thread was deleted 5 minutes later...

EDIT: I queried the deletion with a moderater. Was informed it had been moved to the forums admin area to be discussed at their next meeting. He said he agreed it looks like a serious problem so they are aware.

Wait until there are major media stories about it. Pass this to Wired or Ars or whoever and then they'll start promising a fix.

Interesting to hear that they're deleting it, though.

Why is that? You get the same thing with emails / IRC / some IM protocols / VoIP. What's so "scary" about someone knowing your current IP?

I mean - it's one thing if Skype was advertising itself as a privacy protecting, identity hiding service... but they don't. They provide convenient A/V connections.

Let's say A wants to find B's IP address. In the case of email, A would need to trick B into replying to an email (and also use an email service that adds the client IP header). In the case of most IM servces, B would need to accept a friend request federated from a server. If I'm understanding this correctly, with Skype, A merely has to query B's status to get B's IP address.

In the case of email, the easiest way to get a user's IP is to have them load an external image.

Not true if you use a secure/intelligent email client, like Gmail. It will prompt you with a yellow bar above the email before loading any images.

It also implies that they'll open the email, which most average people won't do unless they know the sender or are otherwise expecting an email.

It's scary when you think about the context - someone you haven't added to your contact list, meaning anyone at any time, can find your current IP.

It's not exactly shocking, but it certainly shouldn't be able to happen until you've approved a person as a contact.

Now it is in hands of Microsoft but the problem was created early when skype was created, they never saw this as a big issue I guess. And honestly is it a big issue? I think it isn't worth sewing for, right now it's more of a face issue if anything. Im sure MS can handle this, if they want to/

This is the most stupid way I have ever seen to blame Microsoft for something.

Bet you're a Mac user?