Microsoft officially acquired Skype in 2011, and since then, the VoIP service has continued to grow in popularity. However, there have been concerns in the past about whether Microsoft and Skype collect information transmitted by the popular service. In November, it was revealed that Skype gave a 16-year-old's information to a security firm without being forced to do so.
Today, several organizations and individuals, led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, published an open letter to Microsoft and Skype. The letter demands that Microsoft provide written assurances that Skype does not collect information about its users and that their data is not sent to third parties. Organizations signing the letter include Reporters Without Borders and the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.
The letter states:
Other companies, such as Google, Twitter, and Sonic.net, already publish transparency reports on their third-party user data practices twice a year. We believe such transparency reports are vital to helping us help Skype users, who rely on your software for the privacy of their communications and, in some cases, their lives.
So far, Microsoft has not responded to the open letter.
