Pre-2017 Skype chatsync

Before a change some time in or before 2017, the VoIP + chat program Skype stored its message history in several binary files collected under a directory names "chatsync". These are particularly useful, especially in comparison to the main Skype log/history database, because they purportedly contain messages that had been "deleted" by the client. Under the "chatsync" directory, the individual files, which have the extension .dat and a main name consisting of 8 bytes represented in hexadecimal (to make 16 ASCII characters), are placed into directories named after the first two characters (i.e. the first byte, as represented in hexadecimal) of their name.

Identification
.dat files appear to have the magic number, as represented in hexadecimal.

Links

 * : A Python tool (Pip package name skype-chatsync-reader) capable of reading the files (this does not seem to work with ; it is possible that the change was not even around 2017 but rather pre-2014)
 * GitHub page
 * An associated blog post
 * An attempt to document the structure of the .dat format
 * Another program for reading .dat files