Skype finds cure to Online Harassment- Releases new Update to Hide IP addresses automatically
In 2015, we reported that scammers/predators are tricking users (mostly males) into extorting money via online video chat on Skype and other chatting software but Microsoft had pledged to offer maximum protection to its users and seems like this year the techno-giant is all out to fulfill this promise. This time, it’s Skype that has received upfront tweaking.
A new update for Skype, Microsoft’s video calling service, has been launched that will reportedly hide the IP addresses of all the users by default.
Microsoft has although released similar updates previously as well wherein Skype users could manually hide their IP address so that others could not view it but this new update is specifically designed to offer protection to video gamers.
Video gamers, who frequently use Skype’s group chat and voice calling services, have previously reported about being targeted and victimized by online attackers vehemently. Gamers use Skype’s various video communication features to connect with other gamers while playing multi-player games online.
In this regard, reports have emerged that gamers often find themselves surrounded by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, launched by malicious adversaries as an attempt to gain access to their IP addresses by searching for their Skype IDs and launching massive malicious online campaigns. These malicious attacks involve flooding someone’s system with falsely triggering SWAT raids upon their online opponents or flooding the system with traffic.
As per the official blog post from Skype, posted on 21st January,
“Skype is fully committed to delivering as safe and secure of an experience as possible to our customers. We have recently introduced the ability to hide a Skype user’s IP address and we’ve set this as a default status in the latest versions of Skype. This measure will help prevent individuals from obtaining a Skype ID and resolving to an IP address.”
Before the new update’s release, Skype has let users to manually select whether they wanted their IP addresses to be displayed to other users listed in their contact list.
Now, with this new update, the users of Skype won’t have to go through this process all by themselves as their IP addresses will remain hidden by default no matter if they are new or existing contacts.
Nonetheless, users can opt to share the information manually by changing the Skype settings.