Skype won't say whether it can eavesdrop on your conversations

Recently, the United States government and law enforcement agencies have been trying to force VoIP carriers such as Skype to include a backdoor that would allow police and government agencies to institute a wiretap on online communications. The surveillance laws have been proposed not only in the US but in other countries as well, including Australia.

Skype has always been regarded as secure and private, with its strong encryption and complex peer-to-peer network connections making calls almost impossible to intercept. Since Microsoft bought it out, though, things have been changing—and your privacy may not be what it once was.

Hackers claim that Skype made a change to its architecture this spring that could possibly make it easier to enable "lawful interception" of calls. Skype rejected the charge in a comment issued to the website Extremetech, saying the restructure was an upgrade and had nothing to do with surveillance.

Microsoft won't say whether it can intercept phone calls. A Microsoft spokesperson said that the VoIP service cooperates with law enforcement agencies as much as is legally and technically possible. However, Microsoft was granted a patent in June of 2011 for "legal intercept" technology designed to be used with VoIP services such as Skype. The patent documentation said that the technology would allow Skype to "silently copy communication transmitted via the communication session."

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