14 DAY TRIAL // Skype users are flooding forums with reports of what appears to be a major privacy bug. In some cases, instant messages aren’t delivered to their destination, but instead they land in a random customer’s chat window.
“Messages sent by one contact (2 lines out of a hundred or so) were sent to another contact of mine. These 2 contacts are not connected on Skype. The 2 IMs appeared to be sent by me,” an unhappy user wrote.
“I have the same problem, messages from one of my contacts went to another, as being sent by me. Very awkward and slightly embarassing. I hope this issue gets fixed asap,” another one said.
Skype representatives have published a statement confirming the existence of the bug. It seems that the flaw is generated by application crashes.
“This issue occurs only when a user's Skype client crashes during a Skype IM session, which may in some cases result in the last IM entered or sent prior to the crash being delivered to a different IM contact after the Skype client is rebooted or logged in as a new user,” Skype’s Leonas Sendrauskas explained.
The number of impacted customers is difficult to determine, but the company believes that there aren’t many, considering that the bug is triggered only when the application crashes.
Internauts who use variants such as Skype 5.9 and 5.10 for Windows, Skype 4.0 for Linux, Skype 1.2 for Windows Phone, Skype 2.8 for Android, or Skype 5.8 for Mac are advised to apply the update as soon as it becomes available.
The company is “working hard” on a fix and will try to address the issue in the next days.
In the meantime, some users have expressed their disappointment regarding the services offered by Skype and are currently looking for alternative instant messaging apps.