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According to the researchers, the government of People's Republic of China monitored and censored messages that were sent through Skype, program which allows users to chat and make phone calls over the Internet.

Representatives of a research group from University of Toronto, Canada, called Citizen Lab, stated that they were able to discover a database that featured thousands of words that were blocked by China due to their political sensitiveness. It is worth mentioning that that database, which is free for public view, also included personal information of every subscriber.

According to developers of Skype, there always felt tolerant towards the fact that China filters the information. However, they mentioned that they became concerned about the fact that the security on their website may show some flows.

Experts from the research group also found a large surveillance system that collected and stored messages that were sent through Skype. The database included over 150,000 messages that contained such words as "democracy" and "Tibet" and a number of phrases that are somehow linked to Falun Gong, a spiritual movement in China.

The report presented by the Citizen Lab and entitled "Breaching Trust" stated: "These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are stored on insecure publicly accessible web servers."

The researchers mentioned that it was possible to use one username to be able to monitor and spot those people that sent or received messages from the initial user. The online text and telephone service is operated in People's Republic of China as Tom-Skype, which is a joint venture that also involves the American online auction and shopping website eBay, as well as a Chinese company called TOM-Online.

Experts at Citizen Lab stated that it was rather obvious that Tom was "engaging in extensive surveillance with seemingly little regard for the security and privacy of Skype users".

The representatives of the company were asked to what degree the Chinese company Tom Online and Skype were collaborating with the government of China in terms of controlling the online communications. In response, the president of Skype, Josh Silverman, stated that the monitoring performed by the government of People's Republic of China, represented "common knowledge" and Tom Online had "established procedures to meet local laws and regulations".

He added: "These regulations include the requirement to monitor and block instant messages containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities."

The president of Skype also mentioned that it was the policy of Tom Online to stop the delivery of unwanted messages, which were then deleted. Mr Silverman said that he looks forward to investigate the cause of policy change in order to allow the company to upload and store the deleted messages.

Despite the fact that the population in China that has access to the Internet is enormous, for a long time the country's government had been monitoring and blocking users that wished to enter website which Chinese authorities considered to be politically sensitive.