Comment 3 for bug 581886

willy@Hamra:~$ sudo aptitude update
[sudo] password for willy:
....
....
Reading package lists... Done

Current status: 1 update [+1].
willy@Hamra:~$ sudo aptitude full-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  skype
1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 20.2MB of archives. After unpacking 505kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] ^C
willy@Hamra:~$ sudo echo "skype hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
willy@Hamra:~$ dpkg --get-selections | grep hold
skype hold
willy@Hamra:~$ sudo aptitude full-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Writing extended state information... Done
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done

so far so good. i start kpackagekit, and it asks for updating skype.
the problem it seems that kpackagekit does not read/respect dpkg's preferences.
incidentally though, it DOES respect apt's pinning options. so if you pin a package, use a negative pin priority for it, you achieve a hold-like scenario. for more information, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PinningHowto