Skype vulerability

[ConcinusMan]

If you have your skype contact name in your profile here you might want to remove it and that goes for all forums and public pages. Without getting into details just yet, (I'll explain that later) having it visible publicly (this is the ONLY place I have done that) resulted in a huge PITA for me the past few days as hackers attempt to gain control of my skype account. Check all your email accounts for emails from skype. You're looking for emails that would indicate that a skype username has been registered with that email addy but it wasn't you that did it. And especially check the email address associated with your skype account. Make sure they are not for a different, unknown (to you) skype username/account. I'll explain more about what happened later but I'm through with skype and their lack of support and glaring repeated security vulerabilities. I never really wanted it in the first place and resisted for years. Now I finaly get it a few months back and this crap happens.

The attempted hack was not successful but it did result in a major pain for me, multiple skype accounts/usernames being registered to the email address associated with my skype account ,and skype support is a joke and theres they will do about it.


One more thing...

If your skype account is associated to hotmail/outlook change that NOW and use a different email address that isn't available publicly. Never display or give out your skype username and the email account name it is associated with at the same time/place.

[guidofatherof5]

Thanks for the heads up.

[ConcinusMan]

It's a little late though, this latest problem with Skype was brought to light 3 months ago. They fixed an issue back in 2010 that made it easy for hackers to hijack your skype account but apparently it still wasn't fixed right and hackers were at it again starting in March this year. Even if it is fixed now, hackers are still attempting to use similar methods and just the attempts, whether successful or not, are a huge hassle. Anyway, I mention it here because when they strike, they hit numbers of people on a particular forum who are showing their skype usernames and this is the only place I was making it public. I figured if they tried to hijack mine, that they probably tried it on others here showing their skype name.

[guidofatherof5]

I deleted mine from the forum to be safe.