Rys Sommefeldt

Deleting Skype accounts

Sign up for Skype using any email address and regardless of whether the email address is yours, the Skype ’name’ you chose is linked to it.

No verification required, just instant attachment to the email address. That’d be OK if you could unlink the names, but you can’t. Nor can you delete a Skype ’name'.

You can remove a name and associated details from public listing, but you can’t permanently delete it. If you ask for a ‘I forgot my Skype name’ reminder, only the latest registered name is sent to the email address.

This has created an arms race for me, being the owner of a rare and somewhat popular _firstname_@gmail.com email address. Idiots with my name sign up for Skype accounts, forget the passwords and/or names, and then my inbox gets spammed with their recovery tokens while they fail to fathom why the tokens don’t go to their actual email address.

Fuck everything about this situation.

I can’t disassociate the Skype names, I can’t ban signups on the address, and the website is fundamentally broken for email addresses with multiple associated names.

I can’t fix it and Skype don’t reply to my emails. Which is no surprise given how hidden all support email addresses are on their website.

Maybe I should sign up the address I do have for a load of Skype accounts in protest.