Since when the respective Governments of the country have imposed the lockdown for fighting the coronavirus pandemic, all the offices and educational institutions throughout the world started working digitally. All employees are working from home and teachers began taking a class through various video conferencing platforms without giving a break to the academic activities. At such instance, an application named Zoom came into the scenario and has emerged as the most downloaded video conferencing platform. It also experienced a drastic increase in its usage ever since the pandemic took its wildest form. Besides, this scenario has also developed the platform to a large extent by developing the app with an excellent user interface and many more.
Despite all these changes coming into play, there are many security and privacy issues that have been raised by many organizations against the platform. Many business organizations have also imposed a ban on the usage of these applications. One such example is the most used search engine- Google.
Google has informed its employees that the Zoom app will not be working in the systems provided by the company. This platform has been replaced by the company’s video conferencing application- Meet, which is a part of G Suite.
Google is not the only organization to impose the ban on Zoom. Elon musk’s SpaceX has also announced its employees regarding the ban. The Government of Taiwan has also informed all its Government officials and offices to stop using Zoom for any works. Recently, New York officials informed all the educational institutions from using this application as a platform for conducting regular academic activities. All these impositions have been taken place since the last few weeks because of an only major problem- security and privacy.
The company faced a significant backslash in its usage after a former NSA hacker discovered the problem in the application. The hacker informed that the security issue was a considerable threat which allowed other hackers to have control on the user’s microphones and webcams of the device which can help them to take the overall supervision of the device. He also stated that the video calls were not reaching the standard of encryption that the company has informed in its terms and conditions. These security vulnerabilities can help in the leakage of classified information and data from various companies. This is the reason that made the platform to get a drastic decrease in its usage.
Also, it has been noticed that many strangers are entering into random video conferences which have been named ‘zoombombing’. FBI announced that people who are committing to these malpractices could be prosecuted.
Other issues such as exposed video recordings, revealed LinkedIn profiles etc. have also been noticed. An investigation also said that the company has been sharing information about the devices of the users to Facebook.
Zoom came into use from April 2019 and has seen good growth in the usage graph, ever since its release. And the company has seen a significant increase in the usage of this application during the pandemic. But these major security concerns have taken back the users from using it. The company says that it has been experiencing this significant backdrop because the application has not been designed for such a vast number of users. So, it decided to stop further developments on the app and is now totally focused on the security and privacy issues for the next 90 days.
So, it is advised to use some alternative applications provided by Google, Microsoft until the issues resolve.
