Re: All Games Free Download Softonic Skype
Demi Kemmeries
To download Skype, you'd probably enter www.skype.com in your browser and look for a download link. If you are in China, however, when you go to www.skype.com, you are automatically redirected to Skype does not ask if you want to be redirected. They also do not inform you of the difference between the regular Skype and the Tom Online version. The websites look very similar. Skype and Microsoft are actively misleading users into thinking that they are using the regular version of Skype.
The regular version of Skype is not blocked in China, but downloading the client is made difficult by Skype and Microsoft. Whenever you try to go to www.skype.com they redirect you to skype.tom.com. One solution is to use a VPN or other circumvention tool when downloading Skype. That way you can avoid the automatic redirection to tom.skype.com.
Another solution is to download the client from a third-party website such as Yahoo. They in turn currently redirect you to the following download link on download.skype.com which seems to work fine in China: SkypeSetupFull.exe.
Anonymous:
1. Any deal can be revised. As we write at the end of the story, Microsoft may be considering breaking their deal with Tom altogether (nor out of privacy concerns, though).
2. Many domains are indeed DNS poisoned. None of them resolve to a website that works, as far as we know. Skype's partnership with Tom is official. This makes us believe that it's unlikely that www.skype.com is DNS poisoned.
3. What Microsoft could do: Make the differences between the official Skype and Tom Skype clear. Offer Chinese users the opportunity to choose what client they want to use. Warn regular Skype users if the user at the other end of the conversation is using Tom. Apologize to Skype users that this has not happened earlier and that their private data may have been shared with the Chinese authorities. There is no law in China that would prohibit Microsoft from doing any of this.
Finally, websites that offer downloads and links for just about anything, such as softonic.com, download.com, macupdate.com, and others, are best avoided as they have all been caught in unethical behavior of some kind in the past.
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