Pssst ... pssst. Hey, don't tell anyone, but I use Adblock Plus and Ghostery (free) and I don't get ads or tracked anywhere (that I know of). I know I have never seen an ad on it for the 6 years that I've had Skype. I won't take the latest update until I'm sure that M$ isn't playing dtective with my life. Both programs work well on Firefox and IE ... and Skype too. No ads at all. I also have Norton 360 running in the background. But even with all that, Skype leaves about 50 files behind every time you open it. Most of the junk is IE5 temp files, but it always leaves about 6 tracking cookies for Bing, MSN, etc., etc. I use CCleaner to clean my machine before and after I use Skype. I only start it when I need it, which is BS but that's how I get around it. I wouldn't buy that program JUST for Skype, and they even admit that It won't work with 'newer' versions of Skype. To be frank, it's junkware IMO. You do know that M$ now owns Skype, don't you? That says it all. - Art