Skype under fire in China

In China, Skype partners with a company called Tom Online, which has been adding on a content filtering mechanism so messages which contain certain keywords aren’t displayed to the user, says this analyst. Some keywords include Tibet, Taiwan, and democracy. The analyst says most of the messages contain criticism of the Chinese party and other sensitive political topics. Skype has acknowledged this filtering and says it’s the price of doing business in China. but the analyst discovered Tom Online was also logging the entire messages. Those private messages included internet names and user names and other information that makes it possible to identify the sender. Skype’s president said it didn’t know the messages were being stored, while Tom Online said it adheres to the rules and regulations of the countries in which it operates. This Chinese blogger says Skype has over satisfied the Chinese government. The analyst says the Skype case raises the concern of Western tech companies going into China.