ATLANTA, GA. (WJBF) – The coronavirus pandemic has forced many people at home to turn to video conferencing apps like Zoom — which draws around 300 million users daily.
But now, new questions emerge about the safety, security and privacy of such apps.
Atlanta Bureau Chief, Archith Seshadri, breaks down what “Zoom bombing” is and how you can protect yourself.
Our new normal means remote meetings, online classes and virtual happy hours.
“A lot of people are using Zoom for education, to meeting people, to social network connections and even health care for telehealth medicine.”
But strangers are barging into private calls to share obscene content.
“Zoom Bombing is when people hijack, takeover an existing zoom session, and someone just interjects and participates in it, disrupts, and posts stuff they shouldn’t.”
To reduce Zoom – bombing, so that users don’t crash your conversations, Zoom has removed the meeting id on the tool bar, added a “Waiting room” feature and added meeting passwords as a default setting.
“Tech experts say to protect your next zoom meeting, don’t use your personal id, have a meeting password, disable audio/video for all participants, and make sure you and a co-host can share screens.”
Arun Vishwanath, Cybersecurity Expert says, “Now, there is a part of zoom that hackers are trying to take advantage of. Outside of zoom box, there are fake apps that could be malware and can take over people’s microphones and videos and all that stuff.”
“There are other options, Facebook messenger, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Duo.”
Corporate employees are also concerned because valuable company information can easily be recorded or leaked.
Besides Zoom bombing, researchers say bugs in codes, data sharing with Facebook, lack of end-to-end encryption and routing some traffic through China are added concerns.
