Skype Outage Update 2017: Problems Fixed After Three Days
A large segment of Skype users has languished for three days, unable to use the service to send or receive calls and messages, with little word from the company until later on Wednesday, June 21. The company said that the issues are now resolved, offering little explanation as to what happened.
Speculations have surfaced, suggesting that the outage may be caused by a hacking attack, a claim that's only been bolstered by Microsoft's puzzling move to stay silent about the cause of the incident, according to Tech Crunch.
The Skype messaging service has been heavily relied on by people working to connect with business clients and with work colleagues for communication. The downtime has impacted users mainly in the European region, according to outage map of DownDetector.
Users in multiple countries across Europe have been unable to log in to the service. A few areas in Japan, Singapore, India, Pakistan and South Africa have been affected as well.
The outage has been first noted by Microsoft on Monday, June 19, and it took them about three days to fully resolve the issue. The company finally declared the problem fully resolved on Wednesday, June 21.
A hacking group has claimed responsibility for the outage, according to BBC. A group calling themselves CyberTeam has announced on Twitter that they are responsible for the problems affecting the service.
Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to maintain their silence and has yet to offer an explanation for the inability of users to access their Skype accounts. In their blog post, the company has simply described the problem.
"Hello, we are aware of an incident where users will either lose connectivity to the application or may be unable to send or receive messages. Some users will be unable to see a black bar that indicates them that a group call is ongoing, and longer delays in adding users to their buddy list," the company wrote, in lieu of an explanation.
The company would later add an update dated Wednesday, saying that the issue has been "fully resolved."
