An unknown number of frustrated Skype customers have been pestered by spoof messages on the Microsoft service for weeks, but the company is yet to close what appears to be a gaping hole in its software.

Instead, Redmond has advised Skype users to change their account passwords.

But complaints are building up about the lack of communication coming out of the Microsoft camp regarding what seems to be a Skype security flaw.

The problem first appeared late last month. One Skype user, posting in a thread that now runs to 22 pages long, said:

I received a message earlier today from a friend on my contact list whom I don't normally have Skype conversations with. The link resolves to a Russian/.ru site so I immediately knew I had been duped and closed the window before the page loaded.

Other users were quick to pile in with similar gripes about the service, while some folk moaned that their PCs had been offline when the spoofing attack occurred.

Skype's support team said earlier this month that an investigation into the issue was "ongoing". But it clearly hasn't been fixed yet, given the level of grumbling over on micro-blabbing site Twitter.

Beware, Skype hacked w/ access to your contact list ! Probably problem w/ their new Web version. CHANGE UR PASSWORD! http://t.co/lszlDpWhL9 — Y (@Yannovitch) July 14, 2015

@Skype I, and many others, are having the same problem with messages being spoofed - http://t.co/o19Wepsbhr - please advise how to resolve! — Michael Glendinning (@msglendinning) July 5, 2015

In the meantime, here's the official word from Microsoft:

Our engineers are still looking into this. Meanwhile we'd recommend everyone to change their account passwords for all your Skype related accounts, i.e. also update your Microsoft account password if you linked that to your Skype account.

®

Bootnote

Tip of the hat to Reg reader Ken for flagging this blunder up to us.