It appears that China has extended its spying techniques; whispers and rumours of China spying on big net names such as Google, and now there is a whisper the Chinese authorities may be monitoring and possibly censoring messages sent via Skype.

Citizen Lab, a Canadian research lab say they have discovered a database containing thousands of politically sensitive words that have been blocked by China, and another database containing the personal data on Skype subscribers in China.

Josh Silverman, president of Skype has said that China’s monitoring policies are “common knowledge” and Tom Online is just meeting “local laws and regulations”. However, he did confirm that it is not the policy of the group to retain and store messages and would investigate the existence of the database.

Guess those with Skype mobile phones better not be messaging China then.

Source – pocket-lint