Chatting with extra colon n http://: crashes Skype on Windows, Android, iOS - Skype has a colon cancer bug

Skype HTTP://: double colon bug

Skype is a successful VOIP messenger and phone calling software which was bought by microsoft and integrated into its hotmail and live accounts.

On June 3rd 2015, Skype users found a Critical bug in Skype where simply typing " http://: "
(Note the second colon after the slashes), will cause Skype to crash on Windows, Android and iOS(iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch).


It DOES NOT affect Mac OsX users and Windows Metro Skype app(Windows 8 and 10).
So these users can easily send such a message to any Skype user on Windows (XP, Vista, 7, etc), Android or iOS to crash their Skype.

They won't be able to open their Skype chats even after reinstalling Skype because the saved chats are loaded from the server.

How to fix the Skype double colon bug ?

• If you able to open Skype, delete that converstion which includes the "http://:"

• OR

• If you have a Mac or Windows 8 or Windows 10 or Blackberry or Windows Phone or Linux or any Jabber client, login from there and delete the offending message.

• OR

History clearing on Skype

• Try clearing your history and setting "keep history for" to "no history". This setting can be found under tools > options > IM & SMS > show advanced options > keep history for as shown above.

This should fix Skype's colon cancer till microsoft issues an update.

Update : Skype patched the bug that caused its colon problems

Skype today has rolled out a fix for the bug that has been causing its client software applications to repeatedly crash if users received a particular string of characters as a message. If someone messaged you with the characters “http://” (without the quotes), Skype would crash and then not allow you to sign in again upon re-opening the application.
To Microsoft’s credit, the Skype team quickly addressed the situation. Initially, Skype began to filter out the characters in messages users were sending across some of its platforms. And today, the company has released an updated version of its client software for all impacted Skype platforms.

That's pretty quick and well handled Microsoft.
Much better than the way Apple handled their "effective power arabic" bug.