And in news of things that really should have been gotten around to earlier, Microsoft have made it so that your IP address is now hidden by default on Skype, preventing anyone who had your details from finding it out.

Previously it was possible for gamers online, if they were losing and wanted to use more underhanded tactics to win a game, to look up their rival’s IP address if they had their Skype details; then they’d launch a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack upon them and through it knock them offline, winning by default. It’s also been used to attack livestreamers on Twitch while they were halfway through a stream. Needless to say, there will be a lot of gamers saying “finally!” upon hearing this news.

“Skype is fully committed to delivering as safe and secure of an experience as possible to our customers. We have recently introduced the ability to hide a Skype user’s IP address and we’ve set this as a default status in the latest versions of Skype. Starting with this update to Skype and moving forward, your IP address will be kept hidden from Skype users. This measure will help prevent individuals from obtaining a Skype ID and resolving to an IP address.”

You can get the update from Skype’s site or if you wait long enough, it’ll probably upgrade you to the latest version at some point.

Skype blog “To our gamers: IP will now be hidden by default in latest update”: [x]