I treat Skype the way I treat the door to my house.  Anyone can send me a Skype invite but I only accept invites from people that I have spoken with on italki, so the invite is expected.  Similarly, anyone can walk up to my door and ring the bell but only invited & expected guests are allowed to enter.  I don't make my Skype address public nor do I intentionally make my home address public but it's inevitable that if someone wants to know either bad enough, they'll get it. 

I now treat friend requests on italki the same way.  If I've had a conversation with someone in a discussion and there was a good vibe, I'll accept a friend request.  If it's a request from someone I don't know, I don't accept it.  The friend requests don't mean much in any case, as the list of friends doesn't mean any additional access is granted, unless you've blocked messages from strangers.

So by all means keep your Skype address private, but really it's no big deal if people know it.  Only accept invites from known & expected people & only have conversations with people that you have previously chosen to speak with.

Thanks everyone. I posted this discussion in response to a couple of people talking to me on this issue. In addition, I have seen many people here just give out their SKYPE or other id's so easily. I am surprised, as people should be very aware these days :)

I wrote this to try to reduce people's problems and not everyone is as aware as other people.
Adding people can cause issues such as Julia mentioned. I am very sorry to hear about that. Of course, most people are perfectly ok, however surely it is just better to do some common sense things or listen to the advice of those wanting to care for other people!
If you do not put ID’s/emails on discussions or profiles you can prevent more people from just adding you for no reason other than have you on their lists. These people are not really the problem; it is the people who become a pest that I am really talking about.
Have fun but just do not share openly and give only to those you think will be any good.

Even though I did follow my own advice, I still had one person pretend to be someone else, then they tried to add me to SYPE and via other italki profiles, they were the same person because they were all generals or majors in the US army! This has not been a big problem to me but others like Julia can have people who become a nuisance or a pest.
So I cannot say my advice will stop people, just reduce the pests and nuisances!

I really like your post Gillian. The thing is, I don't use Skype because I'm not looking for language partners & I already wrote that on my profile. I'm simply learning on my own through writing in my notebook & I get corrections from native speakers, and I'm really thankful for this. But I still receive at least 5 messages a day and most of them with Skype IDs! And I'm also amazed when ever I see members sharing everything on their profiles! What's the point?

Sometimes I think maybe it's because of italki's policy in deleting the private messages that contain e-mail adds or links, maybe this is why members find it easier to share everything in public, to get what they're looking for. 

Hi Gillian!

By the way did you have bad experiences with Skype?

Thanks very much Mumtaz, yes I also get lots with ID;s and email addresses too! I do understand it, but it is just to have less people getting people pestering them!