Is Zoom Sharing your Data?

In recent years, Zoom has become one of the most popular video conferencing platforms in the world, boasting over 300 million daily meeting participants- largely due to the sharp increase in remote working trends. Though many people find its interface user-friendly and convenient, it certainly comes with a host of privacy risks. Privacy experts have been concerned about Zoom since 2019, when the software disclosed its involvement in both a webcam hacking scandal along with a bug that allowed uninvited users to snoop in on video meetings- even ones protected with a password (now known as “zoom-bombing”). Since then, Zoom has cleaned up its act and disabled concerning features, such as its built-in attention-tracking features, and enabled security features like end-to-end encryption. However, there are still several privacy concerns to watch out for.

1. Non-Attendees May be Watching your Recordings: If you pay for a Zoom subscription, be mindful of who you allow to access cloud recordings. This feature, which allows hosts to record the meeting, text transcriptions, and active chats within the meeting, can be useful as a reference for meeting attendees, but can also be accessed by other authorized users at your company- including those who may have never attended the session. If you’re concerned, Zoom allows administrators to limit the recording’s accessibility to only certain preapproved IP addresses.
2. Zoom May be Sharing your Information with Third Parties: In 2020, Vice’s Motherboard conducted an analysis that found Zoom was sharing user analytics with Facebook- even if the user didn’t have a Facebook account. In March of 2020, Zoom announced the removal of this feature, but its updated privacy policy remained murky regarding its data sharing practices with third parties. Since then, Zoom has clarified that, “No data regarding user activity on the Zoom platform — including video, audio, and chat content — is ever provided to third parties for advertising purposes”. Regardless, you should probably look over your Zoom and device security settings, minimizing permissions when possible. Additionally, make sure your Zoom app is up to date to ensure that any security patches have been installed.

If you would like to discuss software security and account privacy, feel free to contact us at info@optfinity.com.