When you buy items online, you (I assume) only give your information over HTTPS.

And you don’t have a page on the web saying your full name, address, DOB, etc

But if your telephony is insecure, that’s pretty much what you do – any interested party can hear whatever it is you say. And it’s easier to tap an Internet telephone conversation than a regular POTS one (I challenge someone in China to tap my phone line, but I bet someone in Asia could tap my Skype calls).

Person to person talking isn’t terribly vulnerable. You only exchange limited information with people you trust (perhaps just for that purpose), and that information is restricted to a limited physical area. Not so with data that travels over the Internet.

And arguing that since traditional telephones don’t have such security, therefore, why should we care that our Internet phone technology doesn’t either, is a bit backwards. Over time, people should be looking to improve security, not simply settle for the status quo, or give it up. Just because the existing technology is subpar doesn’t mean its replacement should be.

you live in this world, and you go about your daily life. talking to people in person (someone could be listening to your conversation through these weird things called Acoustic Sound Pressure Levels, or in laymans terms: audible sounds). you also make telephone calls using your landline or mobile telephone (which could be being listened in to by the government or anyone else who has access to such surveillance equipment. in this day and age it’s not hard to do). and you also use the internet (and every packet of data you send and received is being happily logged by the ISP and this data is at the mercy of whoever)

and you’re complaining about security?

all i can say is el oh el

If you don’t want to use FOSS and be in this community, then fine, go away and stop moaning that there are all these FOSS people talking about how great it is. If you have problems, do something about it, stop crying for free developer time.

*put into similar terms + hug*

If you want to make the best choice you should look to both proprietary and open source vendors. The licensing and code availability will naturally affect the cost benefit analysis.

So the Skype example, sure it doesn’t fit well into the DE of various platforms, and yet it still offers a more compelling service.

Skype’s protocol is closed, as we all know. It’s encryption strength is unknown. How do you feel about having conversations that your government, any other government, any not so nice company, and even Skype/EBay itself may be listening in on? Doesn’t that concern you? Especially considering that Skype has a track record of talking to (from the Western POV) unfriendly governments, such as China, that have not so great human rights records.

The Skype client is, well, horrible. It doesn’t fit well into any desktop (Gnome, KDE, Windows, Mac, etc). It always feels out of place. No multi-IM client (such as Pidgin) can or does support it, so you always have to have it running.

And the list of faults goes on… and neither you nor anyone else out of Skype’s small team can ever fix any issue with Skype. Imagine if tomorrow Microsoft buys Skype from EBay, and halts development of the Linux client. There’s nothing you do… and given how you said you value talking to your friends more than you value your freedom, you’ll have to switch to Windows, and even more proprietary software.

Proprietary applications like Skype are just huge security problems, huge time sinks, and lead to further loss of freedom. Keep that in mind as we all discuss how we “have” to use proprietary software.