On Wed, 2014-08-20 at 10:26 -0400, James B. Byrne wrote: > My recent inquiries have raised the unsettling possibility > that recent Skype clients may be designed to permit remote exploitation of > host systems by unauthorised entities. Generally entities, authorised by governments, have been doing back door entries over the Internet since at least 1995. Its staggering what has been happening, staggering how its done, staggering that every, so it seems, network hardware device has a 'backdoor' - sometimes it is mentioned in the documentation or discovered by chatting with service personnel. Better never to touch proprietary closed-source software. Don't forget M$ Windoze with 3-knocks-and-anyone-is-in software. It caused a friend to get a nasty virus about 10 years ago just by being connected to the Internet and NOT downloading anything at all. He didn't even use his browser. Skype piggy-backs on to a lot of different, and unknown to the caller, computer systems. Try the grown-up version called SIP. It has open source products and it caters for voice and video. Big companies always fully co-operate with demands from Big Brother but never ever boast about their acquiescence. The encryption algorithm for GSM mobile phones was deliberately downgraded ..... We live in the Information Age and Big Brother wants information.