Hacker News Reader

Comment by schuke | Hacker News Reader

It's understandable given that all foreign companies face the same regulations . But what annoyed me for years was that Skype made it very government-friendly:

1) The redirects are made quite thoroughly. Even if you type something like us.skype.com you still get redirected to Tom-Skype, where there is no link to the international site.

2) When you've managed to get a Setup.exe from the international site, it still fetches and installs Tom-Skpe. FFS even the Chinese government can't make something this government-friendly!

View on HN

(1) could be done at the ISP level without any help from skype.com.

(2) interesting. How do you suppose it determines the app to give you?

Same as (1), I'm sure.

In theory an international Setup.exe could decide what package to install and verify its signature.

Disclosure: I just started working at Microsoft, though not closely with the Skype team. My research interests involve authentication, censorship and privacy issues. Be assured that there are smart people inside who are very concerned about the integrity of these systems. If you come across anything sketchy beyond what's required by law in the relevant jurisdictions please let me know or email secure [at] microsoft.com.

I was assuming that this was all behind the Great Firewall and I was assuming that this is legit in the sense that Tom is doing this with Skype's knowledge. I.e., if in China, either installer will fetch the Tom-Skype package.

To (2), it probably uses IP geolocation.

It's understandable? I didn't see Google agree to it? The fact remains Microsoft is all too happy to censor and monitor people in the name of the Government there if they think that will gain them an extra 1% market share. It's what they did with Bing, too, after Google tried to fight against the Government.

Really... Businesses should have political agendas and involve them selves in matters of state? That hasn't worked out so well in the past...

They do it all the time, at the very least in the form of lobbying. Sometimes they do public advocacy that is more direct. The affairs of state can affect a company in the same way that it can affect individuals, so it can be in the interest of business to butt heads with politicos.

I realise they do. I also realise they use it to maintain power, and undermine democracy and freedom... But should they?

Actually this happened way before Microsoft bought Skype. For Hotmail one used to only need change the country setting in his profile to make sure his data is out of Chinese jurisdiction. Quite handy, not sure how it works now though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com