China is running a massive operation to track and store text messages sent over Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless provider and eBay-owned Skype, The New York Times reports.
China has about one million censored messages, many of which contain personally identifiable information, according to the human rights advocates at CitizenLab, based at the University of Toronto.
Here are some of the findings:
The question is whether Tom and eBay are cooperating with the Chinese government. In talking with the Times, eBay was exclusively concerned with the fact that CitizenLab hacked the system, and didn't address concerns about collaboration with the government.
The security breach does not affect Skype’s core technology or functionality. It exists within an administrative layer on Tom Online servers. We have expressed our concern to Tom Online about the security issue and they have informed us that a fix to the problem will be completed within 24 hours.