In its continuing effort to make its services secure, especially for those in the gaming community, Skype recently announced an update that will automatically hide user IP addresses by default.

Skype, the Microsoft-owned chat service announced the plan to release an update that will give its users the ability to hide their IP addresses several months ago. On Jan. 22, Skype finally fulfilled that promise and activated the setting as the default configuration on its mobile app and desktop version.

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The Skype development team posted in its official blog, "This measure will help prevent individuals from obtaining a Skype ID and resolving to an IP address." Several reports claim that the latest security update from Skype is part of its effort to prevent online harassment, especially in gaming community.

In 2015, several professional "Dota 2" games were disrupted by malicious users who employed the denial-of-service attacks. Some players were forcibly disconnected from the game they are connection to, an incident that caused their team to play a handicapped 4-versus-5 disadvantage.

Skype is commonly used by gamers for coordination and in-game communication. Although unproven, most gamers pointed Skype as the main reason for these disruption since it leaks sensitive information like IP addresses of players which can be used to launch these attacks, according to Ars Technica.

Issues about Skype user's receiving threats and harassment because their IP addresses were compromised dates back to at least 2011. Researchers from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University discovered that it is possible to use an online service like Skype in tracking a person's specific location.

In a statement acquired by PC Mag, the researchers said, "Specifically, if Alice knows Bob's VoIP ID, she can establish a call with Bob and obtain his current IP address by simply signing the datagrams arriving to her computer."

In 2012, a Pastebin user posted a detailed instruction on how to exploit the flaw hidden deep in Skype's network. The instruction, when followed correctly, will allow users to obtain another users IP address. During that time, Skype responded claiming that the flaw is a common issue especially in peer-to-peer type of communication.