Microsoft offers all account holders the option to set up two-factor authentication. If you don’t want to appear in search results or recommendations, you can disable this option in your profile settings. Skype by default makes users easy to find through the search feature. You can manage some but not all of the data that Microsoft has about you using its online privacy dashboard. It can also hand over your data in response to a legal request. Your data is shared with Microsoft affiliates, subsidiaries, and vendors. Microsoft uses personal data for targeted advertising, personalization, research and development, and to improve its products.

Microsoft says it also obtains data about users from third parties, which might include data brokers. Microsoft also records user interactions, which might include:

If you use Skype to call phones, then Microsoft will also require your payment information. That being said, we can interpret the privacy statement to deduce some of the data that Microsoft collects about Skype users. Skype isn’t even mentioned explicitly in Microsoft’s privacy statement, and that statement doesn’t even specify what information is collected. Unfortunately, that makes Skype’s data collection practices very opaque. A Microsoft account is required to use Skype. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011, so Skype shares a privacy policy with all other consumer Microsoft products. I will mainly cover the standard Skype apps and not Skype for Business. So is it safe? Is it private? What should Skype users be aware of when they make calls and send messages? I’ll answer all of these questions in this article. Although many competitors have surfaced, Skype remains popular around the world.

In March 2020, Microsoft revealed Skype had 40 million daily active users. Skype is one of the oldest and most popular voice and video chat services on the internet.

Skype sign in to make calls