Microsoft Partners with Signal to Bring End-To-End Encryption to Skype (bleepingcomputer.com)

Microsoft and Open Whisper Systems (makers of the Signal app) surprised many on Thursday when they said they are partnering to bring support for end-to-end (E2E) encrypted conversations to Skype. From a report: The new feature, called Skype Private Conversations has been rolled out for initial tests with Skype Insider builds. Private Conversations will encrypt Skype audio calls and text messages. Images, audio or video files sent via Skype's text messaging feature will also be encrypted. Microsoft will be using the Signal open-source protocol to encrypt these communications. This is the same end-to-end encryption protocol used by Facebook for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and by Google for the Allo app.

Comments

Re:Indeed that is a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, it exists, but it isn'ta relevant. In typical Microsoft fashion, once they got their grubby hands on it, it got so bloated it constantly crashed. I uninstalled it on all my computers and smart-phones and switched to Telegram, which has had encryption the whole time.

captcha: vibrator

Re:Yeah, right

[mark-t]

Companies that want their teleconferences protected from everyone else, don't give a shit about the US government snooping on them.

Anyone with even just a vague understanding of how computers work will realize that these two concepts are inherently contradictory. If the US government can eavesdrop, then so can anyone else, with the right know how. Encryption techniques exist, however, where no amount of know-how will actually make it any easier to decrypt... and these are the so-called unbreakable encryptions that law enforcement bitches about every so often, suggesting that they are thwarting law enforcement, and painting companies that utilize such techniques as deliberately working against them.

The thing that these people fail to realize is that those unbreakable encryptions are also thwarting untold numbers of would-be criminals that would be all too happy to snoop on people's personal and private data if they could... and use it to their advantage, and probably cause measurable harm to innocent parties.

Even *IF* the government could supposedly be trusted to not actually abuse such backdoors, there's no possible way to keep the bad guys from getting their hands on them, and doing incalculable levels of harm.