41 Facts About Skype

Skype is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls.

Skype is available on various desktop, mobile, and video game console platforms.

Skype was created by Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis, and four Estonian developers and first released in August 2003.

Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark.

The Skype software was created by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn, and Toivo Annus.

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In June 2005, Skype entered an agreement with the Polish web portal Onet.

On 14 July 2011, Skype partnered with Comcast to bring its video chat service to Comcast subscribers via HDTV sets.

On 17 June 2013, Skype released a free video messaging service, which can be operated on Windows, Mac OS, iOS, iPadOS, Android, and BlackBerry.

Between 2017 and 2020, Skype collaborated with PayPal to provide a money-send feature.

In 2019, Skype was announced to be the sixth most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019.

Skype was incorporated as a division of Microsoft, which acquired all its technologies with the purchase.

On 20 November 2014, Microsoft Office's team announced that a new chat powered by Skype would be implemented in their software, giving tools to be able to chat with co-workers in the same document.

On 15 September 2015, Skype announced the release of Mojis, "a brand new way to express yourself on Skype".

Later that year, Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President of Skype, announced that Microsoft had acquired the technology from Talko.

In July 2016, Skype introduced an early Alpha version of a new Skype for Linux client, built with WebRTC technology, after several petitions had asked Microsoft to continue development for Linux.

Skype allows these registered users to communicate through both instant messaging and voice chat.

In 2019, Skype added an option to blur the background in a video chat interface using AI algorithms purely done using software, despite a depth-sensing camera not being present in most webcams.

On 25 February 2012, Skype announced that it has over 32 million users for the first time ever.

Multiple different versions of Skype have been released for Windows since its conception.

In 2012, Skype introduced a new version for Windows 8 similar to the Windows Phone version.

On 7 July 2015 Skype modified the application to direct Windows users to download the desktop version, but it was set to continue working on Windows RT until October 2016.

On 24 March 2016, Skype announced the integrated applications did not satisfy most users' needs and announced that they and the desktop client would eventually be replaced with a new UWP application, which was released as a preview version for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and dubbed as the stable version with the release of the Windows 10 Creators Update.

Skype was previously available on Nokia X, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 devices.

Skype uses a proprietary Internet telephony network called the Skype protocol.

Part of the Skype technology relies on the Global Index P2P protocol belonging to the Joltid Ltd.

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Skype was claimed initially to be a secure communication, with one of its early web pages stating "highly secure with end-to-end encryption".

Skype provides an uncontrolled registration system for users with no proof of identity.

In February 2009, Skype said that, not being a telephone company owning phone lines, it is exempt from CALEA and similar laws, which regulate US phone companies, and it is not clear whether Skype could support wiretapping even if it wanted to.

Sometime before Skype was sold in 2009, the company had started Project Chess, a program to explore legal and technical ways to easily share calls with intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

In November 2010, a flaw was disclosed to Skype that showed how computer crackers could secretly track any user's IP address.

In 2012, Skype introduced automatic updates to better protect users from security risks but received some challenge from users of the Mac product, as the updates cannot be disabled from version 5.

In November 2012, Skype was reported to have handed over user data of a pro-WikiLeaks activist to Dallas, Texas-based private security company iSIGHT Partners without a warrant or court order.

Skype responded with a statement that it launched an internal investigation to probe the breach of user data privacy.

On 10 November 2014, Skype scored 1 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard.

Research on the TOM-Skype venture has revealed information about blacklisted keyword checks, allowing censorship and surveillance of its users.

Skype comes bundled with the following locales and languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

In January 2010, Skype rescinded its policy of seizing funds in Skype accounts that have been inactive for 180 days.

Skype paid up to US$4 to persons who opted into the action.

Skype has come under some criticism from users for the inability to completely close accounts.

Users not wanting to continue using Skype can make their account inactive by deleting all personal information, except for the username.

However, Skype is not adopted universally, with many educational institutions in the United States and Europe blocking the application from their networks.