Disruptive Telephony

Over at Skype Journal, Jim Courtney continues his exploration of the IM+ client that allows you to use Skype on the Blackberry.  As I mentioned yesterday, one of my main questions is - where is the PC making the conference call?   As Jim noted, he called me today using the client and I snapped the screenshot he uses in his post.  You can see in the image on the right that we are in a conference call.  The call is hosted by Jim's Skype client and then brings in his mobile phone and then my Skype account.

But where is that version of Skype running as Jim?  It's not on his PC.  It's not on his Blackberry.

So where is it?

Now, the IM+ client has Jim's username and password... and so I am guessing there must be a server back at Shape Services, the maker of IM+, that is running instances of Skype for each person using it.  Is that how they do it?  I would wonder how easily it would scale if this is, in fact, the case.

This all is a concern to me because it does come down to a matter of trust.  Where is that PC that is hosting the system?  How much of my info are they seeing?  If they can login as me (since I've given them my username and password) they can see all my contacts and, on a normal Skype client, all my chats as well, plus my voicemail, call logs, etc.  As the person commenting on my article yesterday noted, someone with my username/password may also have access to my PayPal account... which could ultimately lead to my bank account.  So who and where is it?

Methinks perhaps I need to go and explore the IM+ Terms of Service in finer detail...