Skype sandboxed

[emmjay]

My family has just discovered Skype. They live in Australia and I live in Canada. I have never used Skype before and they have used it only once to try it out (they called each other in Australia and they liked it. Now they want to talk to me on Skype this weekend). I installed the latest version of Skype on W7 just today. The setup was quite straight forward.

For security purposes I want to run it sandboxed (right now it opens up under BufferZone). I just ran the echo test to see if it is set up OK (it worked!). As this weekend will be the first time we make contact, I want to make sure it happens. Will having it sandboxed be an issue?

Also, as an aside, is Skype a megabyte diner ... will it eat up my allocation like a hungry lion chowing down on a zebra? I only subscribe to 1GB/month and we are at the end of the month (I have about 250MB left on my allocation).

[Ritho]

Originally Posted by emmjay

Also, as an aside, is Skype a megabyte diner ... will it eat up my allocation like a hungry lion chowing down on a zebra? I only subscribe to 1GB/month and we are at the end of the month (I have about 250MB left on my allocation).

Yes Skype will eat up a bunch of bandwidth especially if you use video chat, but even if you just use audio chat it is not so bandwidth freindly. Here is a chart I found http://www.hellkom.co.za/skype-bandwidth-usage/

[emmjay]

Tnx Ritho. Excellent chart. Seems to be audio only. We will be doing a video chat. Do you know of a chart that has the video numbers? The vulture circling me right now is my ISP.

[emmjay]

Thought I would update you on the results of my first time experience with Skype.

I took 2 video calls on Skype from Australia, one on Friday 7pm and the second Saturday 7pm. (It was 9am in Australia).

On the first call I had it run sandboxed. It worked. I was not sure if anything would be better if it was not sandboxed, so on Saturday I ran it outside the sandbox and the quality of the call was the same as the first.

The BIG difference between the first and second call was the amount of bandwidth it consumed. The first consumed 100MB for exactly 1 hour. The second consumed 100MB in exactly 30 minutes.

[eyeb]

hm, maybe the sandbox was blocking skype from calling home for ads? I forget if skype is ad driven or not.

If it helps, I have a portable skype that I found on google a while back and have been manually updating it. And then I put it inside JartePE for sandboxing it, works quite well for me. But I'm not sure how the bandwidth works out, I don't worry about it which I know other countries do. Is it possible for you to use skype on your phone? IF you have an unlimited data plan?

if you want an alternative to skype, MSN messenger (actually all of the instant messengers now) have voice/video chat built into them now. And MSN messenger incorporates into windows fairly well, hopefully meaning there is less background data being transmitted but I'm not sure about this.

[emmjay]

Originally Posted by eyeb

hm, maybe the sandbox was blocking skype from calling home for ads? I forget if skype is ad driven or not.

If it helps, I have a portable skype that I found on google a while back and have been manually updating it. And then I put it inside JartePE for sandboxing it, works quite well for me. But I'm not sure how the bandwidth works out, I don't worry about it which I know other countries do. Is it possible for you to use skype on your phone? IF you have an unlimited data plan?

if you want an alternative to skype, MSN messenger (actually all of the instant messengers now) have voice/video chat built into them now. And MSN messenger incorporates into windows fairly well, hopefully meaning there is less background data being transmitted but I'm not sure about this.

Thanks eyeb for your suggestions. I know that my family will not use MSN messenger or any other IM (and I am inclined that way too. They also have their unique security issues. No unlimited data plan for me on my cell phone either. Canada has the worst cell phone rates in the world.

I was wrong about the bandwidth usage on the 2 Skype calls. I was watching the ISP provided connection manager (amount or bandwidth consumed monitor) during the video chats and as soon as they reached 100MB we ended the calls. The ISP has a 'view your bandwidth' on their web page and the day after the calls I noticed 624MB had been used. I had 250MB left on my allocation for the month so I was being very careful. There was no other work of any significance on the PC in those 2 days. Well, this was a shocker. And I was worried about SECURITY ... I should have been worried about the bandwidth monitor ... it was out by a mere 425MB !!! It was my birthday that day... boohoo. It has cost me a bundle in overcharges.

[eyeb]

Is there a security concern you have about instant messengers? I mean that's all skype is basically an IM as well.

See if you can't find a compression setting somewhere, it will lower quality but it should cut down on some bandwidth

[emmjay]

Originally Posted by eyeb

Is there a security concern you have about instant messengers? I mean that's all skype is basically an IM as well.

See if you can't find a compression setting somewhere, it will lower quality but it should cut down on some bandwidth

I guess most of my concerns come from older versions of MSN IM, however when my family suggested Skype, I googled IM security and came across these 2 websites which are a lot more recent than many of the others out there.

http://www.news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9962106-38.html/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07...scripting_bug/

Tnx for this suggestion. I checked the ISP connection manager settings and there is no setting for compression.