Microsoft has released an updated version of Skype 8.80, which finally has the ability to call the emergency service if you are in the United States of America. And as first noticed by developers in the XDA community, the release notes for this app update include new support for emergency calls in the Americas for both PC and mobile devices.
In addition to the ability to dial emergency services, the updated app also boasts the ability to automatically detect your location and share it with emergency operators, which is a very nice and useful addition to the above feature. Also worth mentioning is that the company posted a disclaimer on their Skype support page. It says that the app will only report your location if you dialed 911 for an emergency call.
And of course, for this you must necessarily use a device that in turn can share your location. Moreover, you also need to be in a place where data exchange is available for this function to work, which is not surprising – no data can be transferred without the Internet. By the way, in the past Skype has never supported emergency calls, and the new feature mentioned above can be especially useful if you have access to a computer, but no access to a mobile phone.
However, location sharing is disabled by default, and you’ll have to first agree that location sharing can be shared with third parties – in this case, first responders. To do this, you need to click on your Skype profile picture, then go to the “Privacy” item in the “Settings” section to enable the sending of location information for emergency 911. And yes, if you wish, you can disable this feature at any time . And yes, the new emergency calling feature is now available for Skype on both Windows, Mac, Linux and web, along with the official apps for Android devices, as well as iPhone and iPad.
