I'm an aspiring VA in the planning/research phase. I am looking into going with a Skype subscription to cut down costs, but I came across some stories on the Skype forums about Skype accounts being hacked and unauthorized charges being made to people's accounts. I am thinking this is more of a computer security issue (people clicking on phishing links, etc) rather than a Skype issue, but I wanted to see if anyone here has ever had any problems of that nature.
Thanks!

I thought I was posting this in the "phone, fax" forum, so it may need to be moved. My apologies.

Hi Jen, I've never had any issues along those lines and hadn't heard of those problems, but am not surprised it happens. I would guess that if someone leaves their account open on a public or shared computer those kinds of things could more easily happen.

I've been using Skype for almost as long as they've been around and have always had a great experience with it. So much so that I gave up having a land line almost 8 years ago!

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My old employer used Skype and I used it to converse with a company we used in India. Everything worked really well. the only trouble we had was some feed back and VERY slow response but we came to find out it was because of their bandwidth. Otherwise it work real well.

been using Skype for almost six years and never had this issue....

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I've been using Skype for quiet some time, and have never had any security issues.

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Glad to hear it. Thanks for the replies!

I use Skype all the time. I haven't had security issues, but there are definitely Skype quirks!

When you use Skype for IM, sometimes messages take a while to show up. Sometimes I can explain the time gap and sometimes I can't. It seems to have to do with when the 2 computers are on, but that doesn't explain it every time. It is a little disconcerting to check Skype every day and the suddenly find an old message that you never saw before. But it all works out OK when both parties understand that this can happen.

Also, the Skype help forums and website are pretty worthless. If you need to find out information (even basic pricing), try doing it without about 2 dozen clicks to get to the right page. Sometimes pages load with the wrong currency and it is crazy to gt it to correct itself.

But all in all, I like Skype. Cheap, easy and everyone knows it. It's not bad.

Julia

If you plan to use Skype for the IM capabilities, I've been experimenting with SocialWok. This is an "IM-type" "Facebook Status-type" service where you create groups (they can be private) and you get a feed with all the communications with that group. You can upload documents and it keeps a history of everything that has been written. It is tied to gmail, so you can see your conversations in Gmail. I am interested in it because it might be a better record of my communications than Skype. If you want SKype for IM'ing, give SocialWok a try.

Wow I've never heard of those issues with Skype. The only peeves are the dropped clls sometimes and the call quality. But I think they have improved on the call quality part. I can say that they always seem to be striving to provide a better service. I was looking into Google voice, at least the outgoing are free.

Julia, thanks for the info on Socialwok! I am looking it over now and I love that it works with Gmail and Google Apps. Looks like a great resource, thanks again.