Skype: A Powerful Communication Tool

With great power comes great responsibility: is Skype using its for good or evil?

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Group Name
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"The WIKIMAKERS"

Group Members
Hamid Behmanesh

Kirstie Chisholm

Chantz Fleck

Ovid Kwok

Jonaimy Paglicauan

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/takeachants/logo_skype.jpg                                                               http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/takeachants/skype.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/takeachants/skype-mobile-main.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/takeachants/skype3.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/takeachants/437544245_ef37e0d37e_o.jpg

Background Information


Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis developed Skype Limited in 2003. They are also the developers of the file sharing application Kazaa as well as the peer-to-peer television application Joost. They used their experience with peer to peer networking to create a telephone service that is different then your average telephone service. Currently, Skype is under the ownership of eBay.

Skype is a free internet telephone provider that uses peer to peer software. It allows people to communicate with each other all over the world through the use of the internet. The program is available in at least 28 different languages. The program can work across firewalls and NAT, thereby allowing anyone on the internet to talk to anyone else. Skype works on a decentralized model, in which there are no big phone switches and controlling computers in regional data centers

Skype works by converting the sound of your voice into a digital data packet, which is then fired across the internet and converted back into sound at the other end. Skype allows you to Talk when you want and type when you want, and switch between the two as you wish, seamlessly. Skype is very simple to use and only requires a microphone and some PC speakers or headphones. The program is platform independent, which means that it can be installed on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Services Offered by Skype
Skypeout

Skypeout is one of the main services offered by Skype, which enables Skype users to make calls from their computer to local and international landlines as well as cell phones. The service is available in over 35 countries worldwide, including, Canada, USA, China, and the United Kingdom. It should be noted that Skype is unable to dial 911 or other emergency numbers. Similar to mobile phones, users are given a choice of two different payment plans, Monthly and Pay as you go. The monthly payment plan gives the user an unlimited number of calls to select countries and regions, while the Pay as you go plan allows users pay for their calls as they make them. Monthly plans range from $2.95(USD)/month for unlimited calls in US and Canada to $9.95(USD)/month for unlimited worldwide calls, while the Pay as you go plan involves the purchase of Skype Credits which are counted in minutes thus giving the user the freedom to only spend money when necessary.

SkypeIn

SkypeIn is a service offered by Skype that provides users with a local phone number, making it possible for Skype users to receive calls from regular phone and cell phone subscribers. This also allows non-Skype users to pay local rates if dialing a local SkypeIn number even if the call is long distance, however long distance charges will apply if the non-Skype user does not live in the area of the SkypeIn number.

For example: if a Skype user living in New York purchased a SkypeIn number for London, then people from London would be able to call that number and only be charged local rates. However if someone in Mexico were to call the SkypeIn number they would be charged a long distance fee.

In order to use this service, Skype users simply purchase a local phone number or numbers (up to 10 for a given area) and any calls dialed to that number will be directed to their Skype account. A SkypeIn number subscription can be purchased for three months for $18 USD or a year for $60, both payment plans come with free voicemail as a bonus. Currently, SkypeIn availability is limited to only 21 countries and does not include Canada. Skype SMS

Skype also offers services on the mobile phone, one such service is SMS (Short Message Service) texting. Using this service Skype users are able to send text messagesto cell phones, it alsohas an option of letting the user change the name of the sender of the message to a verified mobile number so that the recipient may respond to the message. Similar to sending messages from the cell phone, there is a fee (usually around 10 cents) for every SMS message that is sent from Skype; however it is generally cheaper than sending messages from a cell phone.

Skype Protocols
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is a new type of technology that enables people to make telephone calls via the Internet. Voice signals can be changed into packets of data, which are transmitted over data networks (like Community Net or the Internet). VoIP systems has boundary with the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) to allow for transparent phone communications worldwide. VoIP has been called a few different things such as internet telephony, peer-to-peer, P2P, IP telephony, broadband telephony, voice over broadband and many other names. Skype is notable service provider example that has achieved widespread user and customer acceptance. At Skype we prefer using the simpler term which is free calls over the internet. VoIP solutions are available both for individual and business users - both offer great ways to save money compared to the call charges of many phone companies and calling cards. The really good thing about VoIP is that it allows you to make free Skype-to-Skype calls – and unlike some other VoIP providers Skype has no monthly fee to make free calls. The same thing works for business VoIP users, so not only coworkers can talk to each without any cost they can also receive calls like any other phone with an online number. By using VoIP, Skype can have these advantages: 1): Voice calling another Skype user. Also voice in VoIP is to be like other kind of data; therefore users can attach documents to voice messages. 2): Voice conference calling up to 4 other Skype users. 3): Voice calling to traditional telephone lines. 4): Voice calling from traditional telephone lines including voice mail. 4): Chat and instant messages for groups with up to 48 participants. 5): Reducing communication costs: Because a VoIP exchange is based on software rather than hardware, it is easier to change and maintain. Over the next five to ten years, VoIP will likely replace traditional voice telephone systems.

Peer-to-peer network and how it relates to Skype

Peer-to-peer network is a networking technology that does not need server and allows several network devices to share resources and communicate directly with each other. On the Internet, peer-to-peer is a type of temporary internet network that allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files from one another's hard drives. Skype is a proprietary P2P VoIP (Voice over IP) system consisting of two types of nodes named super nodes (SN) and ordinary nodes (ON) as well as a login server and servers of SkypeOut and SkypeIn which provide PC-to-PSTN and PSTN-to-PC connecting respectively. Generally super nodes function as ordinary nodes and actually are elected amongst them based on some criteria such as CPU, system memory, available network bandwidth, average uptime (the period which the computer system is active). Besides, an ordinary node must verify itself with the Skype login server, an important entity in the Skype network, as user names, passwords and the buddy list are stored on it.

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[ Figure 4.1 - A peer-to-peer based network ]                                                                                  [ Figure 4.2 - A server-based network ]

Business Empire
A Look at the Business Side

In recent years, Skype Limited has transformed Skype software into a world-recognized business empire. With the purchase of Skype Limited costing $4.1 billion, Ebay INC. saw large potential and had great expectations from the universal software. Skype has responded with a very heavy increase in usage and revenue. According to Ebay’s most recent quarterly report, they have been reported to have added 32 million users in the last period, ending the quarter with over 370 million users worldwide. This number however, doesn’t take into account that some users may have multiple accounts or may have registered a Skype account but don’t use the program. Still, this gives a strong indication of the amount of growth it has experienced in recent months. In addition, throughout the quarter, Skype has increased its revenue by $143 million yielding a 46% year-over-year growth (Ebay INC, 2008). These numbers are remarkable, even when compared to competing services which have been in the industry much longer such as Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and other communication program companies. Financial results released in October from Yahoo’s quarterly report states they have earned $1786 million in total revenue (Yahoo INC., 2008). This is a substantially larger number in comparison but we must remember Skype was only introduced in 2003 and is limited only to its communication software. The numbers for Yahoo include all advertisements promoted and products sold on their well established website.

The $143 million revenue obtained from Skype this last quarter is a very significant stride but also gives the company steeper expectations in the future to provide even better things to come.

Problems
Being such a popular and widely used service, Skype is not without its share of problems and nuances. Two of the biggest problems with Skype deal with its customer service and its invasion of privacy.

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Skype’s Customer Service and Technical Problems

Skype has experienced much criticism and complaint over its major service SkypeOut. Many customers have complained that they were billed unjustly or that they had paid for the service and it did not function correctly. For others the issue was more technical, such as experiencing a two-second delay between someone speaking and hearing what was said, not hearing the other person, or having the call not go through at all. All these problems are compounded by a lack of any significant customer support. Skype having just a few hundred employees cannot match the sheer volume of complaints and technical questions they receive on a daily basis. Thus, Skype relies solely on e-mail, and forum discussions between other Skype users to solve customer complaints and problems, as there is no phone number or link on the Skype website to contact for direct assistance. Even by limiting themselves to email to solve problems, there are still a multitude of customers that are left unattended.

In one case, a Skype user was charged double what she should have paid for her SkypeOut service. She then sent a total of three email inquiries to Skype, none of which received a reply.

Invasion of Privacy

A major concern over the use of Skype is its privacy and the existence of a third party monitoring the conversations. This concern was further sparked when it was revealed that certain German government officials were making use of special software in order to illegally tap into the conversations of Skype Users.

Another example of this invasion of privacy can be seen below

Skype exposed as tool for government control
Skype entered into a joint venture with TOM online, a private Chinese mobile internet company, to offer TOM-Skype voIP to Chinese citizens. In 2006 Skype publicly disclosed that TOM-Skype was censoring SMS text messages with a text filter against politically sensitive words but emphasized the fact that Skype had not compromised customer privacy. Skypes credibility was shaken when this ‘fact’ was found to be false. In October of 2008 the Canadian research group Citizen Lab released a report titled “Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform” that exposed TOM-Skype for monitoring and storing text messages sent or received by their users. This sent ripples around the world as angry users and human rights groups accused Skype of unethical behaviour. They maintained that by aiding Chinese surveillance they were accountable for users being jailed or having their lives ruined based solely on conversations recorded by TOM-Skype. The report outlines the findings that:

1) full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users along with Skype users who communicate with TOM-Skype users are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords and if present the conversations are uploaded and stored on Chinese servers

2) these messages along with records of personal information are stored on insecure publicly accessible web servers together with the encryption key required to decrypt the data

3) conversations are targeted if they contain keywords sensitive to topics like Taiwan independence, Falun Gong, and communist opposition

4) that the surveillance is not entirely keyword-driven implying that there are more advanced criteria that cause conversations to be targeted.

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These findings by the Citizen Lab were made after they analyzed 1,045,800 messages from TOM-Skype users stored from August and September 2008 spread across 8 servers. The topics of targeted messages included: Communist Party, Falun, democracy, Tibet, milk powder, and SARS. In response, users are now calling for Skype to be more direct and transparent regarding their policies of censorship and surveillance and raising the question of accountability of all providers of communication technologies.