Microsoft Now Masks Your Skype IP Address To Thwart Trolls

Since its initial release over a decade ago, Skype has evolved to become the de facto application for those wanting to chat online. It works great as a simple messenger, but also quite well for 1v1 video chats, or even group chats. While the service might have its own caveats, its reliability has effectively locked in a great number of people.

Because of its reliability, even game streamers have adopted its use to chat with fans during a broadcast. But up until this point, there has been a serious flaw tying into this: users could quite easily discover the IP address of a broadcaster, then target that IP as part of a DDoS attack. This of course results in a ruined day of the streamer, and a total hassle for those tuning in.

Apparently, Skype has had an option for a little while to "mask" your IP address, but it was for some reason left disabled. But with new updates rolling out now, Microsoft has decided to flip the switch for us automatically. It's a simple move, but an important one - one that Microsoft probably should have gone through with any time in the past four years since it acquired the chat platform.

While this change will undoubtedly prove useful to streamers, it could protect regular users as well from bots that could fetch a list of active IP addresses and then scan each one for potential vulnerabilities.

The moral of this story? If you can hide your IP address, it's worth doing so.