【新聞】TOM-Skype 會過濾關鍵字

[FYI]

嚴格來說這已經不算新聞, 因為只和在中國工作的台商有關, 或說和整個中國網民有關, 由於小弟的同事也會往來於兩地, 因此小弟才注意到這則新聞, 然而早在2006 年, TOM 版Skype 就已經暗藏玄機, 中國網友早已被半強迫改用TOM-Skype, 因此電腦中已經被植入 "ContentFilter.exe", 幸好只要移除TOM-Skype 就沒事

Nart Villeneuve - Tom-Skype Filtering in China (2006/06/15)

Skype’s partner in China, Tom Online, has implemented filtering of Skype’s text chat for Chinese users. Skype is not being transparent about the filtering fucntionality that has been introduced. Here is my initial attempt at trying to figure out Tom-Skype’s filtering.

Nart Villeneuve - TOM-Skype Q & A

What is TOM-Skype and what is the difference between it and Skype?

If you go to www.skype.com from China, you are redirected to skype.tom.com — so that’s version most Chinese people will use.

In 2004 Skype developed a relationship with TOM Online, a leading wireless provider in China, and announced a joint venture in 2005. Skype and TOM Online produced a special version of the Skype software, known as TOM-Skype, for use in China.

Garden Networks - Internet Anti-Censorship Technologies

04/14/2008

The TOM.com version of Skype (the "Official Chinese Version" as they claim, http://skype.tom.com) has obviously integrated the censorship functionality into skype client. The ContentFilter.exe, which did content filtering in older version of Tom Skype, is no longer a part of Skype installation (3.6.4.150). Instead, the keyword file is downloaded by Skype client. At this point, many of the filtered keywords are related to politics and religion. For example, the Chinese name of the news paper and news web site The Epochtimes is one of the words that triggers filtering. When a filtered keyword shows up in a message, the whole message will be dropped. The download URL of the keyfile is http://skypetools.tom.com/agent/newkeyfile/keyfile. It contains multiple lines of encoded data. Skype, how far do you want to go? Are you also sending user IDs to Chinese Police?

To defeat this, add this line in file c:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts then restart skype:

127.0.0.1 skypetools.tom.com