Annoying Skype chat and contact spam getting worse
I’ve always said that Skype has privacy features to block unwanted spam and contacts. No one tells me to allow chat from unknown contacts — it’s my choice. And at the same time, my Skype Name is fairly visible on the net so I have firsthand experience about incoming spam. And I want to say this — it’s getting worse, especially in the adult services department.
Here’s a random example from today. This happened to be in English, but it has mostly recently been either in French or in Arabic, probably targeted at those markets but indiscriminately spamming everyone. And I used to get like a few random spams a week, but now I’m getting like several a day, and it’s no longer funny and starts being quite annoying.
Down the road, Skype will need to put some product work into figuring it out and fixing it. There may be many ways out here — like community-based trust and ratings? Or just central blocking? I have no idea what would work best, but I want to be able to choose more strictly who I want contact from and who I don’t.
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Really? That’s interesting. This was an issue for me in the early days of Skype, when I was probably one of the first few Italian women to use it and guys would try to chat me up. It hasn’t happened much at all lately. If it’s now women getting in touch with guys to offer adult services, I take it as another sign of, well, industry maturity. Cheers, Paola
Seems like Skype 3.5 (currently in beta) allows you to block your phone numbers from other than those you have as Contacts. This is good for some degree of privacy altho it does nothing for what you are complaining about.
Of course if you change your age to >60, it may slow down some spam .