As approximately one-third of the global population remains under varying degrees of lockdown, the videoconferencing app Zoom has seen a massive increase in its popularity. In December, according to a report by The Verge, the app serviced about 10 million users per day.
As a result, Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal this week publicly called on Zoom to tighten its ship to prevent the increasing problem of what has come to be called “Zoombombing”—hacking into Zoom chats, often to stream unwanted porn—but even more damaging, to attack users with racist, hate-messages.
In March, as much of the United States and the world came under stay-at-home orders to curb spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, Zoom now finds itself handling 20 times that many users—200 million per day.
With the massive boost in use, however, has come exposure of Zoom’s security vulnerabilities—issues that the company’s CEO, Eric Yuan, said in a recent blog post are now being addressed.
Until Zoom makes those fixes, “Zoombombing” will likely continue to disrupt teleconferences, even at relatively high levels. A remote meeting of a state senate committee in Vermont was sent off the rails on Thursday when an unknown Zoombomber infiltrated the video conference with a stream from PornHub.
“I am calling on Zoom to take urgent & aggressive action to stop the racists, trolls, & peddlers of hate that are silencing & bullying communities,” Blumenthal wrote in a Twitter post on April 1. Blumenthal also demanded that Zoom answer questions on “how it handles our private data.”
Blumenthal also posed his questions in a letter to Yuan in which he asked for answers to how Zoom collects user data, and how it shares that data with third parties, “such as the marketing partners described in its privacy policy.”
The senator also asked Yuan to describe measures that Zoom has taken to “detect and prevent Zoombombing.” He asks Yuan to reveal how users can report Zoombombing incidents, and the steps the company takes to respond to those complaints.
Zoom on March 20 published its own guidelines for preventing Zoombombing attacks. The steps include making sure Zoom “meetings” are locked, and requiring participants to join with a password.
The full list of recommendations from Zoom on how to keep out Zoombombers—or as Zoom calls them, “uninvited guests”—may be read at this link.
Photo By Zoom Video Communications / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
