I recently read about Microsoft forcing users to update Skype Classic (aka version 7) to the new version 8 by denying an application start after updating Skype Classic to a newer version.

I’m rarely using Skype at home, but I know a lot of people who do. Therefore I’m already preparing for the questions of how to circumvent this forced update. As already stated on bleepingcomputer, the only way of staying on Skype Classic is to downgrade to version 7.36.0.101. For convenience I’m providing this version for donwload here:

• Original MSI installer
  [SHA256: 91d5a8eee02745335f753e62b8914c3cd30df4539fc018a2818dcf7dfc8dfd6f]
• Original MSI installer in a zip file(For people whose security policies or virus scanners do not allow MSI file downloads)
  [SHA256: d84b52f4ef5aa02b07a8c745624e70990737a2e2dc94dfec2cbda0579338db60]

Bleepingcomputer also provided the original MD5Sum “0ec4d8991728ded1107598c789f0ec89” of the Installer. I’d recommend checking the MSI files you download here against that sum, just to be safe.