I dont know how it works in the US, but in the UK and probably other
countries, there are sticks. Eg UK advertising standards authority, they
can and have fined companies for false advertising. As I recall privacy
international and other user rights organizations have succesfully referred
things to ASA as a way to influence companies making false claims to the
detriment of the users privacy expectations. Companies have been fined,
advertisements changed. It happens with some regularity as companies
marketing people have pushed the boundary of advertising accuracy for profit
motive.
Adam
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 01:45:24PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Nico Williams <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Jeffrey Walton <[email protected]> wrote:
The original Skype homepage (circa 2003/2004) claims the service is
secure: "Skype calls have excellent sound quality and are highly
secure with end-to-end encryption."
(http://web.archive.org/web/20040701004241/http://skype.com/).
Secure in what way though? Probably: relative to passive
eavesdroppers. As for LEA, forget it. (Nothing is secure w.r.t. LEA
that have jurisdiction, as ultimately there's the rubber hose.)
Well, I take 'secure' to mean confidentiality and authenticity,
including an authenticated key agreement. If we don't know who we are
talking to, or someone else can listen in, or someone else can tamper,
then its surely not secure by any reasonable definition.
For a typical user, they would probably take 'secure' to mean that
only both users (the endpoints) can read the message, hear, the
conversation, see the video, etc. I'm not sure how they would react to
'highly secure', other than its 'secure' plus some other good stuff
they can't even imagine.
The new web page does not even use the word
(web.archive.org/web/20130426221613/http://www.skype.com/).
So their advertising/terms changed.
It appears so. In the US, I believe that's a Material Adverse Change
and usually requires explicit notification (credit card issuers were
especially bad about changing terms). Do any Skype users recall being
informed the terms changed dramatically? There was a time the FTC
would do something about it. In the end, does it matter since it
appears there are only carrots and no sticks?
Jeff
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