Skype is looking into complaints on their forums from multiple users alleging that messages sent to one contact have been mysteriously getting sent to other contacts as well, even in cases where the other two contacts in question are not contacts of each other on Skype.

Said one user: "...messages from one of my contacts went to another, as being sent by me. Very awkward and slightly embarassing. I hope this issue gets fixed asap, thanks"

Another user posted: "...I was the recipient of two lines of chat which were exchanged between my contact and one of his contacts. I am not connected to my friend's contact... This is very disturbing and a serious breach of privacy, please address the issue immediately."

A Skype Community Manager, Claudius responded by saying: "Thanks for your reports and sorry for the inconvenience caused by this. We are currently investigating and hope to provide a solution for this soon."

Skype also issued a statement to the media confirming the existence of the bug, though classifying it as rare, and saying a fix was in the works: "We are aware in rare circumstances IM's between two contacts could be sent to an unintended third contact. We are rolling out a fix for this issue in the next few days and will notify our users to download an updated version of Skype."

The bug seems to have arisen following a recent update to Skype in June of this year. It's not the first time an update has caused instability for the voice and chat messaging service. A May 2011 update caused the entire service to crash, rendering it unavailable for 2 days.

Skype has over 650 million registered users as of September 2011, and is the communication platform of choice for many people and companies conducting business online.