Home > Communication > Woops! Skype Admit Message Mix-Up ‘Bug’

Woops! Skype Admit Message Mix-Up ‘Bug’


Click to enlarge

Skypers found Instant Messages (IM) they were sending were going to the wrong recipients, many of whom were not even their contacts.

However, the VoIP service denies it is a big issue and insists it affects just “small number of users” and called the pesky bug a “rare occurrence.”

The issue arose when a user’s Skype program crashes while sending an IM, which causes the message to go to the incorrect recipient after they restart the program, it said.

“We are aware that in rare circumstances IM’s between two contacts could be sent to an unintended third contact.”

Skype also said it was “rolling out a fix for this issue in the next few days” and will notify users of the update.

Here’s what one affected user wrote on Skype’s Support forum:

“Few days ago one friend from my contact list has received few messages I had already received before from other my skype contact. It seemed these messages were sent by me. It is really confusing,”

Another Skyper also had a similar experience.

“Messages sent by one contact (2 lines out of a hundred or so) were sent to another contact of mine. These 2 contacts are not connected on Skype. The 2 IMs appeared to be sent by me, so the other contact asked me if I sent them by mistake.”

Microsoft bought Skype in 2011 for US$8.5bn and recently unleashed sponsored ads for non paying user accounts.