Skype voice service exposes a users IP address to the world. There are tools, called Skype Resolvers, which can then decipher a Skype username to the IP address of the user. The hacker supplies the target user's Skype account name and instantly retrieved the users IP address. This tool is used for knocking users offline buy acquiring their IP address and then initiating denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against the IP. Skype resolvers work regardless of privacy settings in the users Skype account.

Skype resolvers can also be used to track users location as they travel between cities.

This type of privacy issue can be mitigated by relaying Skype signal traffic through proxies. Although, there remain other methods of eavesdropping on traffic. The problem - the maximum tolerable Round Trip Time (RTT) of VoIP users is 300 milliseconds (ms) whereas the propagation delay in a fiber optical cable is 200ms. Therefore, when a user in France calls another one in India, the proxy service must incur less than 100ms additional RTT.

Google has agreed to pay a mere $7 million to 30 U.S. states over a 2010 incident in which its Street View mapping cars collected millions of passwords and other personal data from home wireless networks. The announcement of the settlement is expected to be made by the states early next week, according to the person, though some of the final details of the deal were still being hammered out on Friday. Google has said the incident was a mistake, even though they engaged in this activity in several countries and for a duration of 3 years.

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part (and possibly also the header) of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions, or defined criteria to decide whether the packet may pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or, for the purpose of collecting statistical information.

Deep Packet inspection is contrary to Article 23 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. However Federal Law №139 enforces blocking websites on the Russian Internet blacklist using IP-filtering.

In the United States the FCC has adopted Internet CALEA requirements. The FCC, pursuant to its mandate from the U.S. Congress, has required that all telecommunication providers, including Internet services, be capable of supporting the execution of a court order to provide real-time communication forensics of specified users. In 2006, the FCC adopted new Title 47, Subpart Z, rules requiring Internet Access Providers meet these requirements. DPI was one of the platforms essential to meeting this requirement and has been deployed for this purpose throughout the U.S. President George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have asserted that they believe the president has the authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad without obtaining a FISA warrant.* The Defense Information Systems Agency has developed a sensor platform that uses Deep Packet Inspection.**

The federal prosecutor should have access to better surveillance methods in order to spy on criminals, according to the government, which also wants to be able to use spyware such as Trojan horses for particularly serious offences. Current possibilities for solving serious crimes haven’t kept pace with technological progress, Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said on Wednesday. “The state cannot afford to leave certain communication channels to criminals,” she said at a media conference  Bern. Sommaruga said criminals today could, without spending a fortune, employ encryption technology to evade surveillance.
 
She argued that in order to be able to monitor a conversation over Skype – which allows users to communicate online using a microphone, webcam and instant messaging – law enforcement authorities should be able to use so-called “Government Software”. These programs are installed unnoticed in computers by police – like hackers. They can then see what the computer user is up to. Trojan horses are software programs which appear useful but in fact contain additional hidden code which allows the unauthorised collection of data.
 
The “particularly serious offences” for which such spyware would be employed include the financing of terrorism, criminal organisations or child pornography. Preventative surveillance, on the other hand, where there is not reasonable doubt of a crime, has been ruled out.