After tonight, i feel like i never want to go on skype again. I keep getting random messages from foreign guys that want to cyber and they refuse to leave me alone. One told me that he was going to come to america, find me, then rape and kill me in my house. THEN after i told him i was going to report him to the cops for threatening me he started saying he was coming to my house right now to kill me. He told me to go outside my door and he'd be there. I finally realized that you could block people but at this point the damage is done. im seriously not sleeping tonight.

i cant even explain how creepy it was. even when i said, seriously, dont talk to me ever again. he was all, "you know you love me" then all of a sudden "IM GOING TO KILL YOU"

Please report such cases to abuse@skype.net

please do try changing your privacy settings under tools>options (can't rememebr the exact settings, but where they are located varies between different versiosn and platforms).

you can set up skype so that people can only send you chat messages if they first send an authorisation request and you authorise them.

will try updating this post later with instructions on where the settings are for windows users, but if nothing changes between now and the 18th of september 2007 it's a good sign i wont be updating the post.

I live in Bulgaria.Every day I have at liast 5 masseges like yours.Dont worry this are some idiots who want to freak you up.Block this users and get over it.I even have messages like that:If you dont send this to 20 people ypu will die.This is virus.So dont worry.

you should report cases like that to the given email.

In addition, DO NOT by any means post your street address or other details in skype. The people, who should know it, will ask. And you will tell them...

OK - I am experiencing an increasing problem of random invites from unknown people (mainly men) to chat with them - I asked Customer Support to assist me with preventing this but they just advised me to set the privacy buttons to "only allow contacts in my list" BUT I had done that when I set up Skype over a year ago. But reading this thread I think I have worked out where the problem is & it is NOT GOOD!

That even though I do not wish strangers to contact me, they can still send me an "invite" which I then can either authorise or decline. NOW the big question here is - How the hell did they get my details in the first place in order to send me an invite???

I do not wish my contact details to be available to ANYONE other than people I invite & place in my Contacts List. This is a major privacy issue!

I would appreciate serious feedback,

thankyou,

Pru

Your Skype profile is available to everyone by using the contact search feature. So if you want to be anonymous, leave all the fields blank there, including any profile photo. You can change those details in Skype/Account/My Profile.

Thankyou Dimitri - I certainly was not aware of this - I would have assumed that only those people in my Contacts list would have access to my profile. I have just now taken out all my details.

I have also gone right through the requirements for a Yahoo Messenger account & I note that they actually give you the option of accepting or declining to allow your profile to be made available publicly - so I am impressed by that. It would be good if Skype could also provide such an option. I also note that Yahoo can provide me with all the same facilities as Skype - making local, national & international calls to other phones not just computer.

Pru

I used to have a yahoo account and from my experience I can tell you that their telephone quality is worse than when using Skype. Mind you Skype is bad enough when using for international calls from Australia to Europe. with holes of silences in conversations and dropping up to 5X out of a conversation. But Yahoo. eventhough it is cheaper in their charges is by far worse.
best regards >>>>> from Kersten

Thanks Kersten, I appreciate yr feedback re Yahoo/Skype.

Pru

Kersten,
If you are referring to SkypeOut calls the situation is almost certainly caused by the PSTN carrier used to terminate the call and not your Skype set up.
To resolve the matter please send a report to pstn-feedback@skype.net and include your location, the #s you were calling, time, day and the nature of the faults.
This will allow Skype to contact the relevant PSTN carriers involved and have the situation corrected.