Internet censorship tech-expert Nart Villeneuve reports that Skype's Chinese client (distributed by China-based provider TOM Online) installs censorware on the user's computer without telling. An important point: the international version of Skype available at Skype.com does not include the censorware. Nart says:
Skype's partner in China, Tom Online, has implemented filtering of Skype's text chat for Chinese users. Skype is not being transparent about the filtering fucntionality that has been introduced. Here is my initial attempt at trying to figure out Tom-Skype's filtering. Tom-Skype can be downloaded from skype.tom.com and I installed in in Chinese and English. I also installed the 2.5 beta version, all appeared to function the same. The tests [that follow in this blog-post] are from Tom-Skype 2.0 installed in English. The first thing I noticed is that Tom-Skype is bundled with an executable called ContentFilter.exe. It is an application developed by Tom Online called Tom Word Review. It is digitally signed by Skype.
Link to Nart's report, with screenshots.
Rebecca McKinnon examined the app, too, and wrote:
The bottom line is: TOM-Skype doesn't censor much at all, but it is set up to censor whatever TOM Online employees plug into their "keyfile," at any time. And users (unless they have attained Nart's level of geekdom) have no way of knowing what is going on and why.
Let's hope that TOM Online and Skype do the right thing, which is: 1) Inform users that censorware is being downloaded onto their computers along with the Skype-branded chat client, and inform users exactly which Chinese law requires that this must happen. 2) Do not add any political or religious words to the "keyfile" unless forced to do so by written court order. 3) Make a list of those words added to the "keyfile" available to users so that they can be informed that any messages containing those words will not be received.
Link to the full text of her post.
