Skype phone scam
Dec. 8th, 2017 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dennisgorelikStarting from yesterday (2017-12-07) Microsoft opened phone spam floodgates and I started receiving lots of spam phone calls on Skype.
One of the call even had malformed phone number, which Skype recorded.
After that I started getting infamous "List index out of bounds (0)" error message every time when I tried to click on that botched phone "conversation".
That sort of bug is not new for Skype. Several years ago they had similar issue.
So I had to find a solution to that Skype problem again.
The easiest solution is to delete the whole Skype database, but that would lose my Skype conversations history, which is valuable.
Here is the solution that preserves Skype history:
--------
1) Download and install "DB Browser for SQLite" (or similar SQLite database editing tool).
http://sqlitebrowser.org/
2) Exit Skype application.
3) Open your Skype database in "DB Browser for SQLite":
C:\Users\{YourWindowsUsername}\AppData\Roaming\Skype\{YourSkypeUsername}\main.db
4) Find "Conversations" table in "Database Structure" tab.
5) Mouse-right-click "Browse table".
6) Order by "id" column in descending order.
7) Find that bad record that contains malformed phone number (try to find "4: +140404" in "identity" column).
8) Click "Delete Record".
9) Start Skype.
--------
See also: Editing Skype history / messages / database" video
2018-04-15 update: deleted 2 spam messages again.
One of the call even had malformed phone number, which Skype recorded.
After that I started getting infamous "List index out of bounds (0)" error message every time when I tried to click on that botched phone "conversation".
That sort of bug is not new for Skype. Several years ago they had similar issue.
So I had to find a solution to that Skype problem again.
The easiest solution is to delete the whole Skype database, but that would lose my Skype conversations history, which is valuable.
Here is the solution that preserves Skype history:
--------
1) Download and install "DB Browser for SQLite" (or similar SQLite database editing tool).
http://sqlitebrowser.org/
2) Exit Skype application.
3) Open your Skype database in "DB Browser for SQLite":
C:\Users\{YourWindowsUsername}\AppData\Roaming\Skype\{YourSkypeUsername}\main.db
4) Find "Conversations" table in "Database Structure" tab.
5) Mouse-right-click "Browse table".
6) Order by "id" column in descending order.
7) Find that bad record that contains malformed phone number (try to find "4: +140404" in "identity" column).
8) Click "Delete Record".
9) Start Skype.
--------
See also: Editing Skype history / messages / database" video
2018-04-15 update: deleted 2 spam messages again.
