Tipps, Tricks und Hilfen für die Computernutzung

Warum kein Skype mehr?

I finally uninstalled Skype from my computer, since a lot of news came around, all telling the same, that Skype seems not be a trustworthy
software - for example it reads your Bios-Data and uses your computer as an internet node, without asking you to do so. No one will ever prove exactly what happens with my computer, so I decided to chance for an opensource software. If you
dont know what this means, please have a look at wikipedia).

The facts: Please read carefully:
English: http://www.pagetable.com/?p=27
German: http://www.heise.de/security/news/meldung/85050

Did you know this? Do you want your Computer to spy you out??
And Skype admit it in their terms of use:
English: http://www.Skype.com/company/legal/priv ... neral.html
German: http://www.Skype.com/intl/de/company/le ... neral.html

More facts:
http://www.secdev.org/conf/Skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf

in brief:
good:
- Skype was made by clever people
- Good use of cryptography

bad:
- hard to enforce a security policy with Skype
- Jams traffic, can’t be distinguished from data exfiltration
- Incompatible with traffic monitoring, IDS
- Impossible to protect from attacks (which would be obfuscated)
- Total blackbox. Lack of transparency.
- No way to know if there is/will be a backdoor
- fully trusts anyone who speaks Skype


Alternatives:
Personally I looked out for alternatives and was surprised how many
there are:

Gizmo
http://www.gizmoproject.com/intl/de/index.html
Download: http://www.gizmoproject.com/intl/de/index.html

Wengo:
Wengophone:
English: http://www.wengophone.com/index.php/homePage
German: http://www.de.wengophone.com/index.php/homePage

Download
english: http://www.wengophone.com/index.php/download
Windows: http://www.de.wengophone.com/index.php/ ... oad_wp_win
Linux: http://www.de.wengophone.com/index.php/ ... oad_wp_lin
Mac: http://www.de.wengophone.com/index.php/ ... oad_wp_mac

OpenWengo with Firefoxplugins and different Phones:
http://www.openwengo.org

Ekiga
http://www.gnomemeeting.org/



When in doubt what to install, I think, that Gizmo is
leading in development a bit. But you also can install more
alternatives on one computer.


PS: I you are more concerned about security and if you have enough of
high softwareprices and Microsofts politics, have a look for windows
alternatives. I recomend first www.sidux.com and second:
www.ubuntu.com
Both offer a download of a live-CD, that can be tested, without
modifying or harming your computer at all.