Skype, Fraud and Following The Money

I have a Skype account. I use this account to make landline calls. As such, I have a pre-paid balance with Skype.

Yesterday, I had five euros in my account. Today, I have four cents.

Looking at the call history, a series of fraudulent landline calls were placed, exhausting the account. (The call history CSV is given at the end of the article.)

I contacted Skype customer support.

Hi. I've just logged in today for the first time and my credit is at 0.04 euros. It was at about 5 euros yesterday. Looking at my call history, I see a large number of fraudulent calls made yesterday. I've changed my password. Can you refund the account, please. When I get a few minutes, I'll send a list of which calls were fraudulent.

The reply from Skype;

To ensure that you are the only one who can access your account, we advise you to change your password as soon as possible.

[snip password change URL]

Once you have changed your password and managed to access your account, please contact us again including in your email all previous correspondence with us that's relevant to your case and we will unblock your account. Remember to include your Skype Name.

Based on the information you provided, we have initiated an investigation on the matter.

Skype cannot refund any money you might have lost due to this incident. Every user has to take care of their security systems on private computers. (Bold mine, author.)

To prevent unauthorized use, we advise you to keep your password confidential and not to give it to any third party.

Now, there are two issues here.

Firstly, Skype have asserted that I am responsible for these fraudulent calls, due to lax security on my system, and as such they will not refund.

These calls happened while my laptop was in England, being repaired. The thing is, I took the SSD out before sending it off.

(I have another Skype at work - inside a gated office building. I was at work all day while these calls occurred. I have a final Skype at home, on the server; inside my apartment, inside a gated building. Unless a thief broke in, selected my apartment out of the sixty or so here, used five credits worth of Skype and snuck out, no one used my Skypes.)

That leaves password loss. There's a simple answer to that, for I have never, not once, told anyone my Skype password.

Skype don't know this, because they haven't asked; they've just told me that these fraudelent calls happened because of my lax security.

But this brings us to the second issue...

I said fraudulent calls. But maybe they're not. There were a lot of calls but many were instant hangups and were uncharged. It doesn't look exactly like fraud - you'd just expect a series of normal calls. Maybe there's a bug in Skype's system.

You do not, especially when a customers money has gone missing, assume that what he said to you in an email is indeed exactly and correctly the problem and then tell him you don't refund at all for that problem!

Skype are assuming the problem is fraud, because I said it was, and they're assuming the problem is my lax security, because they said it was.

Frankly, it looks like all they're interested in is not refunding any money.

Skype operates a pre-paid service and all pre-paid services benefits financially from fraud. This is different to, say, a bank. When a bank is defrauded, it typically has lost money; the bank isn't happy (fewer assets) and the customer isn't happy (can't meet rent). When Skype is defrauded, Skype is happy - more business, extra profit.

A search on Google finds as its second hit this page on techeye.com;

Skype disappoints us, disappointingly

The author has had the same experience, except that he had auto-recharge active and so lost more than the balance in his account. He made enough noise that the part of his losses in excess of his original Skype balance were refunded, but not the missing original balance in his account.

My advice; if you have to risk having money in your Skype account, keep your balance as low as possible and, of course, keep auto-recharge off.

--

This is the call history CSV;

Date;Item;Destination;Type;Rate;Duration;Amount;
"April 13, 2011 15:09";+996559969777;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;06:00;EUR 0.739;
"April 13, 2011 14:58";+79503150268;Russia - Mobile;Call;0.069;07:45;EUR 0.631;
"April 13, 2011 14:46";+79534817734;Russia - Mobile;Call;0.069;04:50;EUR 0.424;
"April 13, 2011 14:45";+779534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:45";+779534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:44";+996559969777;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:44";+996550293008;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.119;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:44";+7795534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:44";+7795534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:44";+7795534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:43";+779534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:43";+779534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:42";+99679534817734;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:38";+996550364443;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.119;02:49;EUR 0.436;
"April 13, 2011 14:38";+996550364443;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.119;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:36";+99679534817734;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:35";+996559969777;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:35";+996559969777;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:34";+996559969777;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:34";+7795534817734;;Call;0.000;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:32";+99679534817734;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:32";+996559969777;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:31";+996550293008;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.119;00:01;EUR 0.198;
"April 13, 2011 14:31";+996559969777;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.110;00:00;EUR 0.000;
"April 13, 2011 14:10";+996550293008;Kyrgyzstan;Call;0.119;16:41;EUR 2.102;
"April 12, 2011 08:44";+31000000000;Netherlands;Call;0.019;14:31;EUR 0.324;
"April 6, 2011 12:32";+31000000000;Netherlands;Call;0.019;02:03;EUR 0.096;
"April 6, 2011 11:25";+31000000000;Netherlands;Call;0.019;06:00;EUR 0.172;
"April 6, 2011 11:24";+31000000000;Netherlands;Call;0.019;00:06;EUR 0.058;
"April 5, 2011 10:03";+31000000000;Netherlands;Call;0.019;07:15;EUR 0.191;

I live in Amsterdam. The calls in the first week of April to the Netherlands are mine; I've replaced those numbers with +31000000000.