April 09, 2020, Kathmandu, Nepal
Recently, researchers highlighted the vulnerability of Zoom’s security and privacy against cyberattacks. The application has been in high demand during the time of crisis when physical distancing is a necessity. The CEO of Zoom has apologized to the millions of users after facing criticism for hosting privacy issues.
“We recognize that we have fallen short of the community’s — and our own — privacy and security expectations,” Eric Yuan said in a blog post on April 1. “For that, I am deeply sorry.”
The company claims to focus only on addressing the privacy issues for the next 90 days. Till then, Zoom will stop adding new features to the application. During the time of a pandemic, threats prevail from cyberattacks. In response, the company will release a transparency report, quite similar to that of tech giants like Google and Facebook.
Sudden Rise in Zoom’s Traffic
The COVID-19 outbreak has compelled people to stay at home and maintain social distance. But in the world of social media, how can anyone ask them to keep a low profile?
This boosted the downloads of the Zoom application and even received praise for its features and usability. Yuan confirmed that Zoom crossed 200 million daily meeting participants alone in March.
Users have used the video conferencing app for birthday parties, official meetings, and religious events. The UK cabinet even hosted a meeting on Zoom amid the pandemic.
The application has been around since 2009 but its recent rise in popularity has it facing criticism as well. It has been dealing with many issues than most platforms have, particularly around privacy.
Criticism on Privacy Issues Hit Zoom
Last week alone, Zoom has come under investigation from the New York Attorney General and the FBI. The subject matter for this was something called Zoom-bombing. In fact, security experts have raised questions regarding its level of encryption too.
Likewise, the platform was hit by two class-action lawsuits over a feature which, it has since deactivated. According to reports, the feature shared some user data with Facebook.
The controversy made an impact on Zoom’s meteoric stock price, which nearly doubled since the end of January. Now, it is on a falling spree. The latest data reported a 24% fall last week.
“We did not design the product with the foresight that, in a matter of weeks, every person in the world would suddenly be working, studying, and socializing from home,” Yuan said. “We now have a much broader set of users who are utilizing our product in a myriad of unexpected ways, presenting us with challenges we did not anticipate.”
Zoom also apologized for its misleading claim of “end-to-end encryption for all meetings”. That means all content on its platform is not just visible to the participants. Thus, zoom-bombing!
Oded Gal, Zoom’s chief product officer, said that the platform does not decrypt any information if all participants of a meeting are on its app and if no one is recording the meeting. If any of the participants are from phone or external devices, full encryption is not possible.
“While we never intended to deceive any of our customers, we recognize that there is a discrepancy between the commonly accepted definition of end-to-end encryption and how we were using it,” Gal said.
