>>..and of course some hackers will get their hands on these backdoors as well.
>>
>>The feds are already touchy about using voice encrypted phone calls.
>
>I wonder if Skype is still the same? :
>http://download.skype.com/share/security/2005-031%20security%20evaluation.pdf

It can't be the same. This morning I had to reboot (seems to be I have a stowaway gremlin somewhere in the box) and I noticed the skype didn't come up... well it did and it vanished without connecting - couldn't dig out more info out of a vanished tray icon, could I? Then I checked TaskKiller (the taskmanager on steroids) and voila, some process called "skypeupdater" or something to that effect was running.

So it can't be the same, it now updates without bothering to tell me anything, I have to catch it redhanded, if I'm awake enough.

Not to mention the downright low end sales tactics, like my daughter had a 3-month subscription for some skype service, which suddenly got charged fourth month - and would probably go on indefinitely, had she not raised a lot of noise. The trick was that when you update your skype version, some of those checkboxes somewhere will go from manual to auto and you won't notice. They can then claim that you had the chance to change that, but you clicked OK. Typical M$hit, eh?