Skype User Authorizations (Privacy) | Skype: The Definitive Guide

The Skype application offers a set of features to give you control of who can see your presence information (online status) and who can contact you.

To protect privacy, Skype has a system called authorizations. A Skype

authorization is the right that one Skype user grants another Skype user to see her online status. Each time someone adds you to her Contacts List, she must make a request to see your online status information. If you authorize the request, this person will be able to see when you come online or go offline. If you deny or ignore the request, your online status information will not be available to this user.

An authorization is not simply a flag or a bit that gets set somewhere in the message. It is a digital signature assigned to the authorization that is then sent to the requestor, and it is tied to the same sign-in credential that is used to authenticate identity. Therefore, it is nearly impossible to spoof this system into making Skype act as though an authorization has been made when it hasn't.

You can still be on someone's Contacts List without having authorized him to see your online status, just as someone can be on your Contacts List without your having the authorization to see his online status.

Authorizations are important for maintaining privacy, and they are essential for maintaining control of who can contact you. Skype allows you to set your own privacy thresholds for who can call you, send you IMs, and transfer files. You can specify that:

Anyone can call.
Only people on your Contacts List can call.
Only people you have authorized can call.
IM preferences can be set independently of calls, so you can specify that:
Anyone can IM you.
Only people on your Contacts List can IM you.
Only people you have authorized can IM you.

File-transfer preferences can be set independently of both calls and IMs.

Note

Although you can't revoke an authorization, you can block a user (which is effectively the same thing). Blocking a user prevents her from communicating with you and seeing your Skype status, even if the user was authorized previously. If you remove a block, the previously issued authorization remains valid.

Refer to "Set Your Skype Preferences" in chapter 4 for instructions on configuring authorizations.