Streamers rejoice! In the latest Skype update, your IP will now be hidden on Skype by default. 

From the Skype blog,

Starting with this update to Skype and moving forward, your IP address will be kept hidden from Skype users. This measure will help prevent individuals from obtaining a Skype ID and resolving to an IP address.

Although this seemingly took forever to make happen, the occurrence of DDOSing should dramatically decrease among streamers. Skype was by far the biggest culprit of exposing streamer’s IP addresses. It was so simple to do- if you knew someone’s Skype username, you could just type it into a website and resolve the user’s IP address. Then, just spend a few bucks to target their IP with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) and essentially flood their internet with resources, causing the target’s internet to go down while they are streaming.

It is still recommended to keep your Skype account safe, just in case. Make sure your Skype username doesn’t match your online handle and don’t accept messages from people outside your contacts. Also, remember there are other ways to obtain your IP address. Don’t ever click on shortened links or links you don’t recognize.

Nevertheless, streamers and many other online users can all breathe much easier now.