A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about trying to get my Skype account unlocked and the arcane questions I was being asked by Skype Customer Support. I’d been meaning to write that post for a while… and I’m glad I finally got around to it because John Buston (a former colleague from my days at Fujitsu) pointed me at some advice in the Skype Community that proved to be very useful indeed…

The Skype client (which I still had access to on one of my PCs) uses an SQL database called main.db, found in %appdata%\Skype.  The SQLite browser can be used to view the contents of this database and locate the registration_timestamp in the Accounts table.

Take the number from the registration timestamp, multiply it by 60 and you’ll have the Unix time (the number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970, UTC) from when you registered for Skype. Put that number into a converter (like this one) and you’ll have the exact time when you registered for your Skype account.

Armed with that information (and some more that I could guess, like the email address I used to register for Skype; plus some more that I knew, like my personal details and some names from my Skype contact list) and I was finally able to get my account unlocked.

Thanks again John!