"Skype for Windows takes advantage of Internet Explorer and Flash to display advertisements in the client. This means that in order for advertisements to work correctly, Internet Explorer and Flash need to be working correctly."<p>As if Skype spying on you wasn't enough, requiring mshtml.dll and Flash this now makes Skype a malware vector from compromised ad networks.<p>This seems especially bad for IT environments where Internet Explorer is not the primary browser due to "security" and has Flash built-in (like Chrome used to) or disabled, so any outdated version of Flash attached to IE becomes an unpatched vulnerability possibly outside of IT package management scope.<p>There are other good videoconferencing/call solutions today. I see no reason to install Skype anymore. I personally have not used it in years. (FWIW, I also haven't used Windows as my primary operating system since the days of XP.)
In the old days, people paid for cable TV so they could avoid ads. Now you pay for cable and get ads too.<p>I pay for Skype, but they think they can bombard me with annoying, irrelevant ads anyway. And now the ads actually break Skype itself. Unacceptable.<p>I'm now blocking Skype ads by editing the hosts file. More info here: <a href="https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/ba7dc7a50d90cbf6377d" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/ba7dc7a50d90cbf6377d</a>
Skype is fundamentally broken. I use it on iPhone and my laptop (Mac) and neither are remotely trying to adapt to my use case, which seems to be the vast majority: I use it to talk to a handful of people (two, maybe three) I need to have a button to call each, and access the history of the conversation. Instead, I have unending lists of lists of contacts, annoying recruiters, people who failed an interview 5 years ago, spammers, and I cannot de-list any of them. And violently loud, impossible to remove, alerts for each of those thousands of people’s birthdays, for no apparent reason.
Best of the best: they somehow cannot filter Larsen loops (the annoying high-pitch wobble that comes & goes becomes louder: it’s an acoustic loop between mike & head-phones), so I have to mute every 5 seconds for a second to take those out…
Only good Skype version I know is for OS X. Issues seem to be rare. Even it is not as good as it used to be.<p>Skype on Windows 10 freezes and crashes pretty often. It doesn't seem to like RDP with multi-monitor setups.<p>Android version doesn't always seem to update latest messages. It's presence indicators are also not agreeing with desktop Skype and often just plain wrong. Annoying when you're talking to someone who is 'green' and should be present and turns out they were not.<p>Overall, Skype has gone downhill for at least the last five years. No positive changes.<p>What would be a good replacement? Must be zero configuration, grandma usable, with good voice quality, ability to chat, to share screen and send files.
Is it worth noting that Flash should only show those errors if you have a debug version of the player installed? If you aren't developing Flash content; get rid of the debug player and those errors will go away.<p>[Although I 'm not sure if that will fix the problems w/ Skype]
Running skype on Linux, I was hoping the Skype web client would become a good alternative, but nothing really happens there...<p>Edit:
I wanted to use the Skype app on my modern Android devices but last time I tried it didn't even work.
I have a really standard Win10 machine, nearly new, nothing fancy, and Skype just updated itself to whatever the newest version is. About a minute after the update the machine BSODed (or whatever the BSOD is now on win10) and rebooted, saying it had a problem with an app had had to restart. Kind of worried to start Skype again now. Those adverts drive me absolutely mad though. How much could they possibly make off those ads that they're even worth running in Skype?
Windows 10 now has a built-in "Skype video" app which is much more bare-bones. Once I confirmed it worked for calling the few people I need to video chat with, I uninstalled the desktop app right away.
Also a long-time Skype user. I pay for the $29/year plan that gives me an inbound number and outbound calls anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. I agree that the UI has been getting worse, but I don't see those ads, which I presume don't display for subscribers? I also obstinately continue to use the minimal interface format, so that might have something to do with it. I actually use Skype much, much less these days. Pretty much everything happens on hangouts or Slack.
Author of the article doesn't seem to understand the word "fundamentally". This is most definitely an ancillary flaw, not a fundamental one