PSA: Microsoft Is Using Cortana To Read Your Private Skype Conversations (betanews.com)

BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: With Cortana's in-context assistance, it's easier to keep your conversations going by having Cortana suggest useful information based on your chat, like restaurant options or movie reviews. And if you're in a time crunch? Cortana also suggests smart replies, allowing you to respond to any message quickly and easily -- without typing a thing," says The Skype Team. The team further says, "Cortana can also help you organize your day -- no need to leave your conversations. Cortana can detect when you're talking about scheduling events or things you have to do and will recommend setting up a reminder, which you will receive on all your devices that have Cortana enabled. So, whether you're talking about weekend plans or an important work appointment, nothing will slip through the cracks."

So, here's the deal, folks. In order for this magical "in-context" technology to work, Cortana is constantly reading your private conversations. If you use Skype on mobile to discuss private matters with your friends or family, Cortana is constantly analyzing what you type. Talking about secret business plans with a colleague? Yup, Microsoft's assistant is reading those too. Don't misunderstand -- I am not saying Microsoft has malicious intent by adding Cortana to Skype; the company could have good intentions. With that said, there is the potential for abuse. Microsoft could use Cortana's analysis to spy on you for things like advertising or worse, and that stinks. Is it really worth the risk to have smart replies and suggested calendar entries? I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have my Skype conversations read by Microsoft.

Comments

Good intentions don't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't misunderstand -- I am not saying Microsoft has malicious intent by adding Cortana to Skype; the company could have good intentions.

Intentions don't matter once a National Security Letter trundles in. Then only ability matters.

And that's even before Microsoft gets hacked.

Re:Evil Spell checker

[phayes]

Idiot AC doesn't understand the difference between a local only spell checker and Cortana which is listening to every Skype call and sending it to Microsoft. Or has Microsoft changed the spell checker to be evil too?

Skype has really gone downhill

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just yet another sign of skype's future obsolescence. Skype has been one of those must-have tools for more than a decade - always worked, everyone had it, easy to use, did what it did well, solved a key problem better than anyone had previously done. But recently, it has really gone downhill on all fronts. For the first time in years, I have started having problems connecting with people, supposedly because one or the other isn't on the "correct" version of skype. Microsoft is trying to force people to update to the newest version, supposedly to get enhanced features, but those features in general suck and support for non-core platforms, such as Linux, has gone from bad to miserable. The latest version of skype is much more difficult to visualize and navigate (I hate those new icons), makes you think in order to do things that should be trivial (e.g., talk with someone and send chat messages to them at the same time) and adds a bunch of noisy features to the application that distract from its core abilities (why is it always asking me to send people video messages or add emojis to everything?). If both myself, computer programmer, and my mother, definitely not computer programmer, are confused about how to use skype, there is a serious problem.

In a vain and desperate attempt to change skype into some sort of mini-facebook or instagram or whatever, Microsoft has committed the cardinal error of making it harder for people to do the things that they installed the application for in the first place. Gobbling up your private data in order to monetize that information can only hasten it's decline...

A Star Is Born

[hyades1]

"...I am not saying Microsoft has malicious intent by adding Cortana to Skype; the company could have good intentions."

I realize it was the person posting TFA who said this, not Microsoft itself. Nevertheless, this magnificent remark deserves to to take its place as another star in the firmament of "what could possibly go wrong" comments.

I propose that it be placed just below "Your cheque's in the mail" and "I'll just put the tip in", and immediately above "I won't let go in your mouth" and "We're from the government; we're here to help".

Ha ha ha ha

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"I am not saying Microsoft has malicious intent by adding Cortana to Skype; the company could have good intentions."

I'll say it: Microsoft has malicious intent by adding Cortana to Skype.

The admission that they're parsing and mining your "private" conversations means they're no longer "private".