Name: Zoom privacy: How to keep spying eyes out of your meetings
Uploaded: 2020-04-09T02:37:00.000Z
Duration: 5 min 45 s
Description: It's become the go-to app for working, learning and socializing from home, but the Zoom boom has also brought major privacy problems. Here's how to keep your video chats private and secure.

Stuck at home, then you're probably spending half of your waking hours on zoom calls. But if you wanna keep your meetings and importantly your chats private, then there's a few things you should do right now. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] If keep talking in the house like me then zoom has probably become your one contact with the outside world. Either [UNKNOWN] world I thank you so much. [SOUND] The video chatting plateform has become massive for everything from business meetings to remote learning even just catching up with friends. At the end of 2019, they had 10 million users by March 2020. That went up to 200 million users. But zoom has also had its fair share of issues. And I'm not talking about the terrible camera angles on calls. [CROSSTALK] I think I have it. [CROSSTALK] Maybe you turn your camera on. [CROSSTALK] [INAUDIBLE] we can do all that then that [INAUDIBLE] Zoom has come under fire for some pretty serious privacy problems. People spying on your calls, zoom sharing your personal information without you knowing about it. And something that I just learned. You're not the only person who can see your chats. Okay, let's start with the basics. There are a few different flavors have plans. The free or basic plan is pretty much for regular users. It lets you do things like host calls, set up video chats and do group meetings with a meeting ID. Anyone who has that ID can access the call whether they're coming in through a browser, the app or just by dialling in. But when you start getting into paid plans, that's when you get a lot more features. There are no time limits on calls. You can have way more people in the calls and most importantly you can record meetings. And that's where things start to get interesting. [MUSIC] Now when a host records a meeting, everything is recorded. They get a folder at the end with the video of the meeting audio, as well as all of the public chat messages that were sent, saved as plain text. Not only that, but those chats can be viewed by your Zoom admin, so your boss, even if they weren't on the call. Now, this doesn't include private chats but if you record a meeting with a colleague and everything you say on public is saved. And it could come back to haunt you. This is why it's not a good idea to use your work or your school's email account for social calls. If you hit the record button, then those public chats stay around 30 days and your admin can see everything. It's probably a good idea to just set up a separate free account free social calls. And then you can trash talk, or you're like Tell me about it. What a moron But your boss or your teacher isn't the only one who can say what you're up to on Zoom calls and that's where Zoom bombing comes in. Now this is where someone finds your personal meeting ID and use it to break into a zoom call uninvited, potentially flooding the call with graphic images at the same time. Now it security issues like this that have led some school districts to ban the use of zoom for virtual teaching. That's why you should never share your personal meeting ID online and why you should use a password just to make sure strangers can't come in uninvited. But it's important to know that zoom bombing isn't the only issue that zoom has had in recent months. You know, April Zoomer moved to patriot cold attention tracking, which allowed admins to see whether your zoom window was open and active on your screen. During the presentation. They could also give you an attention score out of 100. The company copped flack for sharing information with Facebook without users consent and for also scraping user's LinkedIn profiles Without their knowledge, and then there's encryption. Now zoom had previously said that they use end to end encryption but researchers from the University of Toronto found serious issues with the security including links to service in China, with governments around the world using zoom for top secret meetings, then those kinds of security issues become a really big problem. Now zoom has tried to reassure its 200 million customers that it takes security and privacy really seriously. It's updated with features like waiting rooms before calls and passwords turned on by default. The company also published a blog post at the start of April saying that it was going to focus all its efforts on fixing these kinds of things. Security and privacy issues. [SOUND] So the big question, should you still be using zoom? Quite frankly, zoom is really handy if you try to get work done remotely, but it's important to remember you can stay safe with just a couple of steps. Don't share your meeting ID online or if you wanna be even safer then use a one time meeting ID set up a password. And importantly, if you wanna keep trash talking with your friends just start a new account so you can keep your chat private. Either way, remember there's one really great feature of zoom calls Pens are optional. [MUSIC] No I can't hear you.>> Do you see me now? Now I'm really bored actually [UNKNOWN] bored. [UNKNOWN] to define actually yes. No you did it fine.>> [SOUND] I always wear pants on video call [BLANK_AUDIO]