A large group of activists comprised of organizations, journalists, lawyers and regular Internet users issued an open letter to Skype’s current owner, Microsoft. This letter focused on the confidentiality of Skype communications. They believe that the service’s confidentiality policy is somewhat fuzzy and the description of possible interactions with third parties and law enforcement agencies is insufficient.

Microsoft’s agreement with China’s TOM Оnline on the creation of a custom version of Skype for Chinese users was especially criticized. This version had a special filter that blocked specific messages. And since this version was identical to the regular one, it meant that any Skype user could eventually be monitored.

Activists reckon that the main reason for such changes in Skype policies is the recent acquisition of the company by Microsoft. That is why it is now held responsible for letting the public know about the ways the service works with confidential data and interacts with law enforcement agencies.

Microsoft employees confirmed the receipt of the letter and promised to issue an official response to these questions.

This conclusion was made by Microsoft after an extensive international research that analyzed the behavior of users online and their perception of online security. Users from over 20 countries, including Russia, took part in the research.

According to this study, only 36% of Russian users fully recognize the importance of keeping their browsing history confidential, but over 63% are confident that the Internet must be safe.

The results are slightly different on the global scale, but the figures as still in the same brackets. Users called page loading times, user-friendliness of browsers and privacy the next most important aspects of comfortable Internet surfing after security and protection from viruses.

Around 60% of all users would not want anyone else to have access to their browsing history, and 20% are afraid of this actually taking place.

The sites that users would not want seen in their browsing history are mostly online banking sites and porn sites.

Microsoft initiated a lawsuit to prevent one of its managers from assuming a position in a competing company.

According to Microsoft, Michael Michevsky, their former manager, copied a large number of internal documents prior to leaving Microsoft and intended to disclose them to Salesforce, the company’s direct competitor.

The court agreed to the argumentation of the plaintiff and issued a court order prohibiting Michael to assume the position of a vice president at the competing company.

Microsoft representatives insist that the actions of their former employee are in breach of the non-disclosure and non-compete agreements that he signed at the time he was hired.
The summons also states that Michevsky copied over 900 files with over 25,000 pages of text (around 600 MB) to his laptop. These documents allegedly contained confidential information about the company’s marketing strategy and copyright-protected items.

Salesforce refused to comment on this incident.