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Ask HN: Is it reasonable to assume all skype calls are recorded by Microsoft?

11 points by nyxtom ↗ HN
There's been an uptick in privacy policy articles lately targeted at Google. At work we always joke about how Microsoft and the Gov. has access to all Skype video calls, but I'm actually wondering seriously whether this is the case. I seem to remember the architecture around skype is still P2P for voice and video calls? Their privacy policy doesn't seem to preclude them from doing so. Thoughts?

6 comments

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through
That’s my running assumption and why I don’t use it.
danieltillett
Yes. I doubt they want to, but the US gov can be very insistent.
rstuart4133
The architecture changed a while ago. It's no longer p2p: https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522

It's probably not reasonable to believe all calls are recorded by Microsoft. The storage required would be huge, so there would need to be a business case to justify the expense.

However, it almost certainly reasonable to assume Microsoft can and do record any call that interests them or any outsider they have to / want to please.

Jedi72
I doubt it, recording all that audio needs a non-trivial amount of compute, which means $$$
farseer
Recording raw audio would not be feasible storage wise, however transcribing that audio and recording the resulting text is very much doable.