The good folks at The Register have an interesting piece about a piece of software from a company called EasyBits that Skype uses to manage plug-ins. Apparently is reads your device information and sends it back to the mothership.
Among other things, EasyBits offers DRM features that prevent the unauthorized use or distribution of plug-ins, and that’s why Skype 3.0 has been nosing around in users’ bios. Reading the serial number allows EasyBits to quickly identify the physical computer the software is running on. The practice was discontinued on Thursday, when Skype was updated to version 3.0.0.216.
“It is quite normal to look at indicators that uniquely identify the platform and there is nothing secret about reading hardware parameters from the BIOS,” Skype’s blog author, Kurt Sauer, assured us. He also says Skype never retrieved any of this data. We’re not sure that’s the point.
The article goes on to describe how Skype swears up an down that it’s users aren’t being fed spyware.
Um, ok. Read on. (short story, Skype has removed the EasyBits DRM piece.)
Nice! We got an mention from Ryan Naraine over on ZDNet. Thanks Ryan.
[tags]Skype, Skype Spyware, EasyBits[/tags]