Understanding Skype

cfr · 2018-03-27 01:04:24

I installed Skype on my old machine, but abandoned it as the mic made it sound as if I was next to a small, but running, jet engine. I thought I would try again on my current machine as friends of mine would like to use Skype to discuss their cat from Argentina.

I remember that before I had to do various things and that I set up a special user account for Skype for security reasons. I did this, it goes without saying, by following the wiki. However, the wiki now provides no information concerning Skype at all. The page is archived, but following the archive link just gets me the archive page again and the history suggests that 'irrelevant history' was trimmed.

Are there instructions for setting up Skype and mitigating any extant security concerns? Or is this all just old hat and the current AUR packages provide a secure-out-of-the-box installation?

I gather that there are various alternatives to Skype. These sound good, but I guess they won't work for contacting people using Skype ... . That is, if they use Skype, I have to as well?

Chazza · 2018-03-27 07:59:07

I set up Skype the other day and it was pretty much just plug and play - I installed skypeforlinux-stable-bin, signed in and I was ready to go. If you want the client to remember your password you have to have gnome-keyring installed (otherwise you get prompted for login details every single time) but other than that there's nothing special you need to do.

As for that article, I had a read of the last version before it got archived and I have to say it all looks utterly ridiculous to me. The security concern highlighted in the article was that the Skype client is distributed as a binary that's disguised against decompiling thus you don't know what it really does. It cites the fact that encrypted traffic is generated even when you're not using the client. Fair enough. But then that begs the question, if you don't trust the Skype client, why on earth would you trust their network??

If you feel unhappy about having the client on your machine, you could follow the steps proposed in that article, creating a separate user for Skype, using docker etc. But if you want to go down that route then I think it would be a lot less hassle to just run the client in a VirtualBox VM... There is a package in the AUR skype-secure which depends on one of the skypeforelinux packages but I have no idea what it does.

It's your decision but quite honestly, I think it's a fuss over nothing and I would just install the client as is.

City-busz · 2018-03-27 08:01:08

You don't need to install any specific software for Skype. Just open the https://web.skype.com/ website in Chromium, and you can start voice/video chat from there.

Arch Linux

#1 2018-03-27 01:04:24

Understanding Skype

#2 2018-03-27 07:59:07

Re: Understanding Skype

#3 2018-03-27 08:01:08

Re: Understanding Skype

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