Annoying Skype chat and contact spam getting worse

June 12, 2007

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.