A ton of Skype users were unhappy with the update from Skype 6.x to 7.x. Most of what I have seen is complaining about a few minor changes to the user interface. In the usual baby/bathwater situation that follows this sort of thing, "Power Users" began circulating guides on how to modify hosts files to prevent TCP connections to skype and msn domains. You know, because making sure you have the correct proportion of whitespace is more important than stupid trivia like patching critical security vulnerabilities . To address this madness, Microsoft decided to get clever. In addition to sending the Skype 7 update through the Skype application and related packages like Lync, they would push it through as a Windows update - KB2876229 . The Skype application updates are pushed through *.skype.com and *.msn.com , while Windows updates come from domains like *.microsoft.com , *.windowsupdate.com and *.windows.com . The looks over substance crowd hadn't yet reached the levels