Section 9.1. Hacks 7478: Introduction

9.1. Hacks 7478: Introduction

Skype, like any social community, has its pluses and minuses, its pros and cons. It is also a community with a truly global reach. There probably isn't a country in the world that doesn't have some sort of representation within the Skype community, and for some countries those numbers are now very large. However, like all social communities and networks, Skype represents all sorts of people, both good and bad. For that reason, you must take responsibility for, and control over, how you interact with the Skype community at large. The hacks in this chapter will help you do exactly that, as they address security and privacy issues arising from using Skype.

Having said that, I should make you aware of two additional security issues that I discuss elsewhere in this book. File transfer has the potential to infect your computer with a virus, an issue I discuss in this chapter. However, it is possible to disable Skype's file-transfer function altogether (see "Disable Skype File Transfer" [Hack #58]). Similarly, the Skype Application Programming Interface (API) has the potential to be misused by malicious Skype add-ons, and can similarly be disabled (see "Disable the Skype API" [Hack #100]).