
Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room - runesoerensen
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/skype-finalizes-its-move-to-the-cloud-ignores-the-elephant-in-the-room/
======
lkrubner
A personal anecdote: I had the same account on Skype for most of the last 10
years. The same username. It was stable. Lots of people could contact me
reliably. It was an account that was created long before Skype was bought by
Microsoft.

Then came the update that they pushed out last year. Now everyone needed a
Microsoft ID to login. There was some kind of "improvement" in the way
authentication was done. So I had to reset my password. This lead me into a
hellish 3 hour ordeal. None of the reset passwords worked. I went through the
process 14 times. I would ask for a new password, I would get sent an email, I
would click the link, I would end up being told I now had a Microsoft ID, I
would try to use it with Skype, it would not work. I read the How To
documents, I searched Google for others who might be having this problem. I
tried variations in the way I was doing things.

In the end, I had to give up. There was absolutely no way to rescue the
account that I had used for most of 10 years. I had to get a new account. I
believe I had about 10 euros on the old account, which is now lost forever.

I am a professional computer programmer. If I can't figure out how to reset a
password on Skype, then what are the chances that a less technical person can
do it?

I remain a bit astonished at how bad that upgrade was.

~~~
1ris
>I am a professional computer programmer. If I can't figure out how to reset a
password on Skype, then what are the chances that a less technical person can
do it?

Had the same experience with the german postal service a few week ago. When
you register there, you register for their shitty amazon-clone aswell. Turns
out, you have only one account with one passwort, but the two sites have
different password polices. My password had a '#' in it, witch wasn't allowed
for the post part, but the passwort reset form didn't care, because it was
allowed on the newer platform. You just can't login on the other and get no
usefull error messages.

~~~
dangero
Man that's bad. Enforcing password policies at sign-in seems like a terribly
flawed idea.

~~~
hafreni
I wish password policies would be standardized, but then we'd have something
like this happen: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

------
m_mueller
It's also gotten extremely buggy. Can't get reliably through firewalls
anymore, constantly orders messages wrong or doesn't show messages that were
sent by a different client (even though they were received by the other party
correctly), has much worse voice quality than Whatsapp, can't handover between
networks, takes ages to load on older iPhones, the list goes on. I'd move away
to Whatsapp in a heartbeat if they offered group calls and paid calls to phone
numbers.

~~~
mhurron
> It's also gotten extremely buggy.

No kidding. If I get a skype message while my iphone is locked, when I swipe
to unlock and open the app, those messages (all of them if there were several
on the lock screen) are lost forever.

~~~
MichaelGG
I've the opposite issue. Skype keeps redelivering messages. Even after I've
read and responded. Sometimes 8 hours after.

The UI always sucked (made me wonder why it has been mentioned as a positive
example of software made outside the US) - but the basic message flow is
broken now.

~~~
m_mueller
> positive example of software made outside the US

well in this particular case it seems to have been screwed over once an
American company took over. Skype always worked fine before MS (and the US
Government) took over.

------
bargl
>Peer-to-peer connectivity also has some privacy issues; the exposure of IP
addresses to peers was abused to perform denial of service attacks against
victims, a problem that became distressingly common in the world of e-sports.

My brother who is a streamer, was DOSed because his IP was leaked via skype.
This can be a huge pain to anyone with a public image and they have to use
security by obscurity to maintain the integrity of their IP addresses. That
and VPN/VPS etc. Which honestly my brother has no clue how to set up or use.

I'm not saying that you should use Skype, far from it. But at least they will
be closing some of their attack vectors based on this and individuals won't be
DOSed because they used skype and some script kiddy found a way to get their
IP (which is super easy fyi).

~~~
Vexs
Discord actually went as far as to add a streamer mode which adds on extra
security & obscures names and the like. Handy.

------
binarymax
Not sure about that elephant. Anyone using Skype still assuming their
conversation is secure and private, is exceedingly naive.

Those who really need security and privacy, know not to use Skype.

~~~
mrweasel
>Those who really need security and privacy, know not to use Skype.

Everyone needs security, and privacy. If you're a company, you need security
and privacy, and most will just assume that Skype provides it. And for the
most part Skype provides them with the security they need. Most of the users
of Skype just needs protection from snooping competitors and Skype provides
that to a sufficient extend.

Honestly no one will care the slightest that Skype has become less secure,
because in their eyes it hasn't.

But yes, most users for Skype are pretty naive, about security at least.

~~~
dimino
> Everyone needs security, and privacy

I'm so tired of this, no I don't, at least not as much as so many people think
I need. No, I don't care if my Netflix password is easily crackable, and no I
don't care if the US government reads my Skype chats!

Why am I not allowed to make that choice, to use Skype and be okay with the
convenience tradeoff? I agree that I should have the choice, but if I do
choose to use something insecure with full knowledge of it's insecurity, can't
I be free to do that?

~~~
mixmastamyk
"I don't need free speech, don't have anything to say."

~~~
dimino
"I don't need free speech all the time."

~~~
mixmastamyk
That's not how it works. If you don't fight for your rights, you will lose
them.

~~~
dimino
That isn't what's at stake here, however, so the hyperbole is unneeded.

~~~
mixmastamyk
History begs to differ. The loss of privacy and LE overreach is real, whether
you care about it or not.

~~~
dimino
Sorry, but a) that's not what I'm talking about, and b) there is no precedent
for the Internet.

~~~
mixmastamyk
a) False, privacy is exactly what we're talking about. b) irrelevant.

When you allow yourself to be vulnerable to others with power over you
especially the government, eventually they will take advantage. Whether you or
someone unluckier, and we should protect the weak. This has been recognized
for _centuries,_ try reading some Locke or Jefferson.

~~~
dimino
In the general, yes, we're talking about privacy, but specifically, no, it's
_not_ what we're talking about -- we're specifically talking about Skype's
_need_ to be completely private, and how if it's not, we're somehow losing the
battle for privacy everywhere, as if Skype's insecurity will make people
unable to use PGP or some other good encryption.

Just because I can post a bulletin on a public poster board, doesn't mean I
can't also write a private letter. There are no "weak" people here, and
_plenty_ of better battlefronts to wage this war. Every single messaging
platform doesn't need to be completely secure, that's absurd.

Just to back up a second, what is it you think I'm advocating here? That we
not have privacy??

~~~
mixmastamyk
No, but the freedom to have "no privacy" is not a problem anyone has. There is
no privacy online and no alternatives to Skype that we can get anyone to use.

~~~
dimino
> There is no privacy online and no alternatives to Skype that we can get
> anyone to use.

WhatsApp is used by 1 billion people worldwide, so no, this is completely
false.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Oh it's completely false because you found an exception, haha.

~~~
dimino
Yes, that's correct. You claimed there were no black sheep, and I found a
black sheep.

------
jpalomaki
I'm a bit surprised about how many issues people are having with Skype. I have
been using Skype quite heavily for couple of years and I'm not really seeing
these issues. For me the sound quality feels really good, as long as the
internet connection is ok. The messaging seems to be realiable, I haven't see
lost messages or messages coming in wrong order. I'm running on multiple
platforms, OSX, iOS and Windows.

BUT there is of course things that could be done better. While one-to-one
calls work well, I feel that on the group calls with many participants (say
5+) are not so good.

I think Microsoft is missing a huge opportunity when they are not taking Skype
further and adopting some features from Slack and Google Hangouts. Most of the
technology is there, they would just need to tweak it a bit to better match
the requirements. Some things I would like to see: the concept of organization
and associated rooms. Possibility to push messages to these rooms from outside
systems (think CI and other notifications). For group calls I prefer the way
Hangouts, GoTo meeting and WebEx works. Somebody sets up the meeting and then
others join. The message history and search should be improved. With Slack you
start relaying that you find the old stuff from there, in Skype the search is
bad and the message history does not go very far.

Now that Microsoft also happens to have LinkedIn, they would be in pretty good
position to create a communication solution that would span organizations.

I'm aware about Skype for business, but also a bit suspicious about how this
will turn out. Lync feels more or traditional enterprise stuff that you run
inside your own network and not something for the Internet.

~~~
m_mueller
Have you also tried to use it in corporate networks? Do your mobile devices
sometimes go offline?

------
morgante
Skype is my go-to example of why software quality matters.

They dominated the market. Tons and tons of people had Skype accounts and, to
this day, "Skype" is informally used as a generic verb for videoconferencing.

The problem is that the quality has fallen substantially over time. Now things
like [http://appear.in](http://appear.in) are much better solutions for basic
videoconferencing and Slack has eaten the communications space which Slack
should have owned.

~~~
discodave
> Slack has eaten the communications space which Slack should have owned.

I think you accidentally a word :)

------
rincebrain
I'm pretty certain that Microsoft already (mostly) made this backward-
incompatible move several years ago, when they shut down the last of their
(old Skype protocol)<->(MSNP24) gateways in 2014, so any Skype clients that
predate the MSNP24 support being added to Skype no longer work.

The thing they're doing now is probably either breaking Skypeweb backward
compat or a rev on MSNP, depending on which mechanism the embedded clients
use. Quickly reading the actual blog post that the Ars article is about [1]
(which I couldn't find an obvious link to in the article) makes me think it's
probably Skypeweb they're breaking.

[1] - [http://blogs.skype.com/2016/07/20/skype-the-journey-weve-
bee...](http://blogs.skype.com/2016/07/20/skype-the-journey-weve-been-on/)

~~~
kirkdouglas
I've just read the blog post and it seems that they will migrate Mac client to
Electron soon. That sucks, since I like native Mac client.

~~~
dingo_bat
Am electron app is 100x better than the "native" windows 10 Skype app.
Seriously, the native windows apps are so thoroughly non native it blows my
mind that Microsoft still employs a UI team.

------
arunc
What stable alternatives do we have for a pure P2P? Tox still doesn't persist
group chats, yet.

I hope someone will come up with an implementation of Riffle.

~~~
Sylos
The recent introduction of WebRTC to browsers could throw Skype off its
throne.

You pretty much just go on the webpage of such a WebRTC-service, start up a
conversation, which generates you a link, then you send that link to your
conversation partner and they just have to open this link in their browser to
join the conversation.

That's so incredibly simple to use, that it should be much less of a problem
to get people to use it instead of Skype.

And it's end-to-end-encrypted.

And for example Mozilla offers such a service (called Firefox Hello [0]) for
free.

The only thing where Skype could compete here, is by offering services
surrounding video calls, for example a contact list, file-sharing, support for
businesses etc.

[0]: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/hello/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/hello/)

~~~
ronjouch
It's _" incredibly simple to use_" only when the asynchronous use case you
describe is desirable.

Consider this very basic use case: my mom and I want to be always able to
call/interrupt each other.

\- Skype fits the bill: I just double-click her name in the contact list. She
hears the ringing, and answers.

\- WebRTC-based services do not: I have to generate a link, email it, and
_hope_ she sees the email (she won't) then join asynchronously.

Put dryly, basic WebRTC-based services like Hello lack the notions of a
contact and a presence mechanism. That's a deal-breaker for my use case.

EDIT: I see you mention _" services surrounding video calls, for example a
contact list"_. Agreed, but to me it's more than an additional service, it's a
core feature.

~~~
vidarh
But nothing prevents people from building such a presence mechanism as an app,
or using browser notifications. The point is that with WebRTC the hardest bit
is taken care of. The number of people who have the skills to meaningfully
innovate on the surrounding UI and capabilities is vastly greater than the
number of people who'd be able to come up with usable video calling.

------
Kluny
What are people using for video chat? I use it so rarely (maybe once a year)
that every time I do, I have to learn some new software, install stuff, sign
up for accounts, etc.

Facebook messenger is great for talking with my niece, but that's not
appropriate for business. I ended up using Facetime most recently. That only
works if I bring my personal computer to work.

I had the same experience as @lkrubner when I tried Skype. I didn't spend
anywhere near two hours on it - I gave up after ten minutes.

~~~
Nullabillity
My (small) gaming group recently migrated from Skype to Hangouts for both in-
game stuff (voice) and minor tech support (screen sharing).

The screen sharing is vastly superior compared to Skype, and text is actually
readable (1080p screens on both ends), and I would assume that that translates
to video calls as well!

For the in-game stuff the kicker was that one day my computer stopped getting
notified of the group calls existing at all. But after the transition even the
most reluctant one commented on how much nicer the sound quality was.

Of course, I'd have preferred to use Mumble where possible, but somehow I
suspect that that would have been an even harder sell. :/

------
csours
Not really related, but I have Skype for Business on my phone (so not really
skype at all) and every time I launch it, it crashes at least once on launch,
sometimes twice.

~~~
SillySina
I had that same issue. :(

------
awqrre
Skype was originally using p2p for everything, then moved to Linux Microsoft
owned servers for supernodes[0] and now they outsourced to "the cloud"?

0: [http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-
replaces-p2p-s...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-
replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/)

------
dzdt
Isn't the elephant in the room competing services : facetime, or facebook
messenger, or whatever the google product is?

~~~
mrweasel
Which are all terrible in a business setting. Facebook is block at my
employer, because most people doesn't seem to understand that they shouldn't
be on Facebook during work hours. Also many companies doesn't exactly like it
when you use a private account for business related communication.

Google Hangout is just horrible, and not only because I'm require to have an
Google account (and I'm NOT using person accounts for work related
communication). Whenever I get an invitation for a Hangout "call", I ask that
they call the phone on my desk.

Skype works because people are just asked to create a Skype account using
their work email. It's not perfect, but at least when someone leaves you can
reset their Skype password and get the reset-password email.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
> Facebook is block at my employer, because most people doesn't seem to
> understand that they shouldn't be on Facebook during work hours.

Why is that? People's personal life doesn't disappear when they arrive to the
office.

I've seen employers blocking services and getting a spike in productivity...
for the next day - then people find something else to do when they need to get
distracted, rest their mind, socialize, etc

Also, it's terrible to apply technical solutions to education issues. If your
employees are spending way too much time on Facebook, first you need to have a
conversation with each of the offenders, second you might want to look deeper
into the issue as you might not be feeding them enough work to do. Your
processes might be broken, so your supply chain and productivity would be
impacted by design, not purely as a consequence of people slacking off :-)

~~~
kuschku
> People's personal life doesn't disappear when they arrive to the office.

It does.

Just like work life disappears the moment you leave the office.

Work is work, personal is personal, any kind of mixing always ends up with
horrible results.

In many countries, the inverse - doing job related things at home or in
general outside of paid time - is even highly illegal.

------
SeanDav
It is pretty much assumed by almost everyone out there that Skype is fully
under surveillance and intercepted. If you care in the slightest bit about
security, don't use Skype. Other than that I find it useful for keeping in
contact with friends and family. For gossip and inane chatter it works well.

~~~
ignasl
Yeah I also don't use skype to discuss my evil world domination plans!

~~~
sangnoir
I think risqué Skype calls are the more common concern: long-distance
relationships (and teens) outnumber moustache-twirling villains by millions-
to-one

------
tinus_hn
I would imagine Microsoft abandoned direct peer to peer communication because
of patent trolling, just like Apple had to change Facetime to no longer
support direct connections.

~~~
api
I've heard mobile -- they found that direct P2P was too taxing on (earlier)
mobile devices.

Wimpy mobile devices have been a significant factor in pushing everything to
the cloud.

------
zeveb
I'd really like to see a secure (-enough) video chat app which integrated well
with mattermost & murmur/mumble (which I wish integrated really well with one
another). It'd be even better were it end-to-end encrypted of course, and
while I'd (of course) prefer excellent security, I'd be willing to trade a
little of that for good-enough-to-resist-public-WiFi-threats.

Something like self-hosted Signal for video.

------
dkarapetyan
Obviously don't use it if you care about privacy. Same reason you shouldn't
use gmail, facebook, twitter, etc. I hear the folks over at
[https://whispersystems.org/](https://whispersystems.org/) are working to fill
in the gaps. But even the peer-to-peer version did not protect privacy so
nothing lost, nothing gained here as I see it.

------
thieving_magpie
Let's be a little more dramatic. Instead of reading into what they didn't say,
what if you... asked them and reported on that.

~~~
DrPizza
I did ask them, and the post contains everything they had to say in response.

~~~
thieving_magpie
Interesting - I can't really get down with that kind of chicken little
speculation. That's a shame.

------
garyclarke27
Does anyone know, whether Skype is still running on Postgresql? If so, would
be amusing.

------
mschuster91
Heh, in case there is any Skype developer on here: will it EVER be possible to
log in on Android with a Facebook account?! It sucks so much.

------
BonoboIO
Stopped Using Skype years ago, now with slack and google hangouts ... who
needs Skype. Got slower and slower with every version.

~~~
adeptus
I know Slack is trendy, but as a non programmer and old IRC user, I find it is
slow, centralized and clunky.

------
BerislavLopac
I'm curious: is there room for a peer-to-peer competitor with better user
experience?

------
skyker
Has anyone checked out Cisco Spark?

~~~
mschuster91
Looks like a hipsterized version of Cisco Jabber to me. I hope it doesn't
share Jabber's huge list of bugs, but looking at Jabber, I don't have much
hope.

------
thefastlane
what's happening lately with XMPP's Jingle? is that a viable alternative?

~~~
mephistopheles
As long as both parties are using the Off-the-Record Messaging plugin[0], yes.

[0] [https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/](https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/) or pidgin-otr
in the package manager of your choice.

