Message on Skype from person unkown.......

[Oscar]

I recieved a message in my Yahoo mail from someone I've never heard of, asking if I would 'rate' them on Skype . My sign-in name used for Skype was correct - and it's quite a complex one, so this person must have accessed my account. I only use it very occasionally to talk to friends in South Africa. I've since blocked acccess to her, but how does this happen?

I'm not paranoid about it, just curious.

Gwyn

[John-Nihon]

I'm not sure how it happens, I haven't looked into it, but I occasional get this. I just block them afterwhich I never hear from them again.

[Oscar]

Mmmm - odd isn't it -I thought it best just to block her John - I was just curious to know how the information fell into her mitts.............

Gwyn

[John-Nihon]

Hi Gwyn, The only thing that I can think of is that if you have the allow anyone to contact you option set to on and someone tries to contact you but you don't respond within a certain time period then eventually the skype system generates and sends you an email containing the contact's name and initial contact message.

I don't think that the person contacting you knows your email address, unless you advertise it publicly. I think the email is skype generated.

I may be wrong but this is what I think.

[MarionH]

Hi Gwyn,
Just one thought - under the Privacy settings in Skype - have you set Allow IM's from "people in my Contact list only" or is it set to "anyone"

[Oscar]

Thanks John and Marion.

Yes, that's maybe an explanation, John - Skype could've sent the e-mail. Never thought of that.

I've limited contacts to those in my list - only four people and have done so ever since I started. A while ago, I had two very odd messages (contact was smutty to put it mildly), so those senders were also plonked in the 'banned' bin!

Gwyn

[Linda from Murton]

I have my Skype restricted to my contacts only. In the last week I have received e-mail from Skype saying people wanted to contact me and could I add them to my list.

As I had never heard of these people (one was from China by the looking of his seventeen digit, more like a password, name) I simply deleted the e-mail without opening it.

Think these people must be just doing trawl searches for names and then click on send request to send message.

Edit: Out of interest I just went into Skype setting and saw that I was down for anyone to contact me. This must have happened when I downloaded the new version. Needless to say I am now "contacts only"