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roundbook on Sunday February 17, 2008

I use skype for keeping in contact with family mainly. It's an easy application that allows us to talk to each other and have video calls for free. However, skype has some weak points that can cause some online safety and privacy concerns for yourself or for children using it. With its default settings, anyone can see your profile and try to contact you. If you let anyone try to contact you, then you may be a target of inappropriate solicitations. I have received unsolicited chats, to which I never respond (they main point to safety is to restrict your interactions online to only people you know that you know - see here). The chat box pops up with sometimes a benign "hello" or other times explicit content. The user trying to contact me sometimes has a profile picture that displays next to the chat. So I looked around to see what can be done to make my skype presence safer, and more private, yet still be able to use the service.

There are a few settings you can change that make a big difference though, so here they are, and here's how and why to set them:

First: Disable and Don't Use "SkypeMe"
"SkypeMe" is an online status you can set. I originally thought it was the same thing as "Online" but also announcing that you were waiting or wanting people to call and chat. However, "SkypeMe" disables all privacy settings, meaning anyone can contact you. Therefore, in order to enable privacy settings and keep them in place, announce yourself as "Online" and never as "SkypeMe".

Second: Enable Privacy Settings
1. You can get to your privacy settings by clicking on File > Privacy...

2. Choose "Only allow people in my Contact List to contact me". Don't forget to Save at the bottom, otherwise the changes won't stay.

And you are done. Now you can use the software as a great tool for keeping in touch with people you want to keep in touch with.
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Here are a couple more ideas, if you want them.

You may change your Calls and Chat privacy settings separately in the respective sections. If you decide to enable anyone to chat with you, I suggest disabling the "Open a chat window when someone starts to chat with me" option in advanced features under chat. This will keep their profile picture from coming up on your screen automatically when someone starts to chat.
To keep children from using skype without your supervision, disable it from starting up and signing in automatically. If your child has their own skype account, you can have the password and not allow them to know the password. Then they must come to you to sign in.
It seems like, as I am a young male in my profile, I got more unsolicited invites than my wife without privacy settings. You could consider not setting your gender in your profile.
I'm still working to figure out how to best protect against unsolicited invites to skype, the above settings seems to only protect against calls and chats, not adding someone as a contact. I'll update when I have more detail on this.

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