Zoom app lawsuit. What Zoom’s $85m class action lawsuit means for data privacy

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A class-action lawsuit brought by users, including church groups, states they were bombarded with abusive messages and imagery. On Thursday, federal judge Laurel Beeler of California granted final approval to the agreement which was first filed in July. The agreement was granted preliminary approval in October. The settlement stems from 14 class-action complaints filed against the San Jose-based company by users between March and May of , in which they argued that the company violated their privacy and security.

In one incident two years ago, the Saint Paulus Lutheran Church in San Francisco was hosting a bible study class in which most of the participants were senior citizens. The host was unable to remove the hijacker from the meeting room and asked the participants to leave and rejoin the meeting, only for the hijacker to bombard the meeting again with graphic content.

There are around million settlement class members, which include paying and non-paying users, and the compensation amounts may change, depending on how many claims are submitted. As part of those changes, the company is required to develop and maintain a user-support ticket system to track reports of meeting disruptions, a documented process for communicating with law enforcement regarding disruptions that include illegal content, a suspend-meeting button and the ability to block users from certain countries.

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Zoom agrees to ‘historic’ $85m payout for graphic Zoombombing claims | Zoom | The Guardian - Most popular

  Technology TikTok delays changes to privacy policy over Europe data concerns , article with gallery July 12, China and Saudi Arabia are two of the most recent. In , several app users sued, arguing Zoom failed to protect their privacy. Zoom under increased scrutiny as popularity soars. From pet and child interruptions to catching fire, here's a look at the times online meetings went wrong. The suit serves as a high-profile reminder of the increasingly heated data privacy debates playing out within the walls of big tech companies and in the halls of Congress. It also accused Zoom of misstating that it offers end-to-end encryption and for failing to prevent hackers from "zoombombing" sessions.    

 

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Just one more thing! Please confirm your subscription to Verge Deals via the verification email we just sent you. Email required. CEO Eric Yuan said company officials "were made aware" of Facebook data sharing last week, after a news report from Vice Media detailed the practice. The lawsuit also states Zoom was paid for sharing user data, although court documents don't disclose how much money Zoom allegedly received.

Aparna Bawa, Zoom's chief legal officer, said in a blog post that Zoom "has never sold user data in the past and has no intention of selling users' data going forward. New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked Zoom to provide specifics about how the company will safeguard users' data. In a letter James' office sent to Zoom, the state's attorney general said her office is "concerned that Zoom's existing security practices might not be sufficient to adapt to the recent and sudden surge in both the volume and sensitivity of data being passed through its network.

A Zoom spokesperson said Tuesday that company officials would provide James with the information requested. Zoom's security protocols gained even more attention in recent weeks after the FBI reported an increase in so-called Zoom-Bombing incidents, where a hacker joins a video conference to post pornographic or hate images. The agency's Boston office advised users not to make meetings public or share links to the video conference on social media.

In April , Zoom faced a number of difficult accusations about its encryption standards after an investigation by The Intercept. Zoom was allegedly encrypting its video calls using TLS encryption, which is used to secure websites that have 'https' in their URL.

TLS encryption is different to end-to-end encryption, which is what we would expect a company like Zoom, that is facilitating millions of private discussions that could reference personal and corporate data, to be using.

If Zoom used end-to-end encryption, only those with local encryption keys could gain access. TLS encryption would not stop a Zoom employee, for instance, viewing a Zoom call they didn't have permission to. Another separate sting by Motherboard Vice revealed that Zoom was leaking people's email addresses.

Zoom's "Company Directory" setting automatically adds other people to users' contact lists if it notices that their emails share the same domain. In reality, however, it culminated in users being pooled together with strangers as if they were working for the same organisation.

But these are only a few examples of the issues Zoom has been tackling since the pandemic began. There have been numerous privacy-related missteps, including the creation of an 'attendee tracking' function that lets the meeting host see if people are clicking off Zoom meetings.

The company has also said that it will modify how Zoom works to increase privacy and security standards, including sending alerts to meeting hosts when third-party apps are being used during meetings.