“Skype has become the latest US firm embroiled in controversy over its operations in China, acknowledging that its Chinese partner had been archiving politically sensitive text messages.
Skype, the online text message and voice
service owned by auction giant eBay, said on Thursday it had been unaware that the Internet chat of users in China was being stored on computer servers by Chinese mobile firm TOM Online.
Citizen Lab, a group of computer security experts at the University
of Toronto, revealed Wednesday that TOM Online was spying on TOM-Skype users in
China and collecting messages with specific keywords” Source: AFP.
of Toronto, revealed Wednesday that TOM Online was spying on TOM-Skype users in
China and collecting messages with specific keywords” Source: AFP.
China has gotten a bad rap because it publicly, as a matter of policy, snoops on the Internet activity within its borders. But, do not fool yourself. A certain level of snooping, happens everywhere, even in the U.S.
If your browsing the net at work, more than likely your employer has some sort of Internet filter, proxy server, or firewall that logs the outbound traffic of its employees. Your home ISP such as your DSL or Cable modem provider does the same. The levels of “snooping” vary, but the bottom line is, there is no default anonymity on the web. If you truly wish to be anonymous, you must take action and protect yourself and your activity.
Privacy 2.0, which Im a strong advocate of, is the new wave of applications, services and methodology that assists end users with protecting their identity and Internet activity. This is just the latest example of why people should take an active role in protecting their identity. Shameless plug: the next time you want to post an item up for sale on an online classified site, check out Arzoola’s private call to protect your number from the web.