The main purpose of the digital certificate is to ensure that the application belongs to the entity to which the certificate was issued. The Skype Technologies SA digital certificate does not guarantee that a signed application is safe to run, but rather informs the user that the software was digitally signed by Skype Technologies SA and verified by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA).
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features which include instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing. Skype has 663 million registered users as of 2010. Unlike other VoIP services, Skype is a peer-to-peer system rather than a client–server system, and makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software; the original name proposed – Sky peer-to-peer – reflects this.
www.skype.comAbout (from Skype Technologies SA at www.skype.com)
“With Skype, you can share a story, celebrate a birthday, learn a language, hold a meeting, work with colleagues – just about anything you need to do together every day. You can use Skype on whatever works best for you - on your phone or computer or a TV with Skype on it. It is free to start using Skype - to speak, see and instant message other people on Skype for example. You can even try out group video, with the latest version of Skype.
If you pay a little, you can do more things, in more ways, with more people – like call phones, access WiFi or send texts. You can pay as you go or buy a subscription, whatever works for you. And in the world of business, this means you can bring your entire ecosystem of workers, partners and customers together to get things done. Try Skype out today and start adding your friends, family and colleagues. They won’t be hard to find; hundreds of millions of people are already using Skype to do all sorts of things together.
Founded in 2003 and based in Luxembourg, our purpose is to break down barriers to communication. Skype is owned by an investor group led by Silver Lake and which includes eBay Inc, Joltid Limited and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz. Skype had an average of 145 million connected users per month in the fourth quarter of 2010. Skype users made 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls in 2010, approximately 42% of which was video.”