Mysterious Skype charges pop up in PayPal accounts

By Triston McIntyre

A recent adopter of the application myself, Skype is a wonderful way to keep in contact with people across the globe via text, voice or video chat. Noting that the best thing about Skype is that it is free for most calls, there must be shennanigans afoot, as some users have been greeted with unexplained Skype charges in their PayPal accounts.

Skype only charges users for phone calls to non-Skype numbers, so you can imagine the readers of The Register were a bit confused when they were received Skype charges when their computers were off. One of the hapless readers, Neil Lu****, wrote, ""I doubt it's a phishing attack... I download all email to a Linux box, don't view mail as html, don't click on links unless I've looked at the code to see where I'm going and turn the machine off unless I'm using it."

The Skype charges in his PayPal account totaled £11.50. He was no doubt even more surprised to learn that he was not the only victim; when he contacted his bank about the charges, First Direct said the bank has been informed of multiple fraudulent charges on PayPal accounts due to Skype.

Yet another reader was hit with a stiff £93.12 in charges, and wrote The Register in hopes of spreading the word about the fraudulent activity.

So, if it isn't phishing, what is it? My first instinct would have also turned to phishing as an explanation. Beyond that, there is the possibility that there was a breach in Skype's security that the company has not admitted to. If someone hacked into Skype's systems and stole user information, they could certainly run up Skype charges on PayPal.

Then again, why exactly would anyone invest the time that would take simply to cause a few UK users grief? There isn't any profit being gained here, so the situation is beyond confusing.

Hopefully Skype and PayPal can work together to establish the cause of the charges before people start dropping PayPal and Skype. Wait... who am I trying to kid?