Skype stops online monitoring in China

Online telephone company Skype has admitted that TOM Online, the majority owner of its Chinese venture TOM-Skype, has been monitoring and storing some users' text messages.

Skype issued an apology after making the admission that TOM-Skype had been monitoring text chats with politically sensitive keywords and storing them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could be easily accessed by the Chinese government.

Jennifer Caukin, a spokeswoman for Skype, said her company had not previously been aware of the practice, and that such monitoring had now been stopped. ‘We are concerned to hear about security issues brought to our attention and confirm that TOM was able to fix the flaw,’ she said. Further changes in storing and uploading chats ‘will be further discussed with TOM’.

TOM would only say: ‘As a Chinese company, we adhere to rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses.’

Monitoring of online chats and search patterns has become a major CSR issue following widespread global criticism of Yahoo over its role in handing over details of the online activity of dissidents to the Chinese authorities.