A nine-year Skype partnership with TOM Online in China was ended by Microsoft earlier this month and just this week, the company announced Guangming Founder (GMF) as TOM Online’s replacement.
Microsoft’s increased security of Skype chats in China makes them less susceptible to spying
This isn’t the only change occurring with the service in the country, however, as suggested by research from GreatFire [via]. Microsoft has apparently made chats more secure and possibly even less prone to government spying. Back doors may still exist, and Microsoft is still following local regulations, however. Still this marks a notable 180 by Microsoft in terms of the agreement it had with TOM Online before.
Skype service is now using servers based outside of the country and is transferring all data directly to Microsoft over more secure HTTPS connections, so it seems that Redmond has full control over the new calling and messaging application.
It’s actually quite common for apps to be censored in the country. LINE’s app for instance censors politically-sensitive words, something that is often required in order to be able to do business in China.