This morning, I found out that I received a call from “skype-resolver” in the middle of the night on my phone. When I went to Skype, the call was nowhere to be found, presumably because the account had already been deleted. iOS however, kept a record of the call listing the name as “Group%20Maker” and username “8:guest:abab0b31-f32b-…”.
This was surprising, because I’ve never been called by a scam contact in my decade of Skype usage. The furthest it would extend to is a contact request.
I have experience with Skype resolvers, having experimented with them many years ago. I tested it on myself, and it would spit back my IP. Only it would never call you in the process. Ever since these were apparently patched, the websites would never work, and few people speak of them any longer.
That’s why I thought it was so strange to get a call like this. I searched the Skype directory for similar contacts and found dozens of active “Skype Resolver” accounts, all with the “guest:xxxxxxxx-xxx…” usernames. But that’s as much as I’ve been able to find out about my caller. Is this just some new scam, or was someone actually trying to get my IP in 2021?
Update: Notification cache on my phone says the caller was actually named “skype-resolver.net“. This website just leads to a “Coming soon” screen. A whois lookup says this website was created yesterday.
Update 2: Received a second call from them about 18 hours later, with a different username. Wanted to answer but did not do so out of security for my IP. Thoughts?
There is now a working Skype resolver in 2021. It is skype-resolver.net, and it will call you if you try to look yourself up. Either the old security flaw has not been fully patched, or a new one has been found. It is not clear whether the site calls you automatically, or only when someone is trying to look you up. It doesn’t matter whether you answer–if you try, the call will instantly end.
There seems to be a simple fix for this. On each of your active Skype devices, go to your settings, and enable the option “Only allow Skype calls from contacts to ring on this device”. While you will still see a missed call notification from the guest usernames, the site itself will output “Could not resolve user”, and there will be no current IP listed. That being said, past IPs you’ve had may still be visible.