As Zoom bans spread over privacy concerns, vid-conf biz taps up Stamos as firefighter in totally-not-a-PR-stunt move Video-conferencing company du jour Zoom is desperately trying to head off a mass exodus of users by announcing a new advisory board – and hiring former Facebook and Yahoo! CSO Alex Stamos as a troubleshooter. In a roller-coaster few weeks for the tech upstart, it has seen its user base explode, thanks in large part to its …
Don't want to state the obvious, or defend Zoom (although their call quality is better than "others"). But...
Zoom users are highly encouraged to set a password on their meetings, which is a default setting; to not share these credentials publicly, or miscreants will spot them; to use the waiting room feature to vet participants; and to control who can share what during conferences.
...which we all know users don't. I mean, >90% of the calls I do, the hosts don't even use "click to allow entry" (thus allowing gate crashing). Users start/ join with video/ audio always on. If you question hosts/ users about this, reply is that it is "such a hassle to enter passwords and switch video/ audio on all the time". Really? Moving your finger? I mean, it's not like you're asking them to do Iron Man. Good thing though that people by now got the message that downloading and installing randomly found software from the interwebz isn't what you want to do.
Oh...
I've had good experiences with veeting.com, but you have to go through the pain of making sure your browser works with it (it's WebRTC based, and not all browsers are equal in their support). On a Mac I found that Firefox with ad blockers and other things tended to be problematic, but Chromium works just fine, and there's an actual app for iOS.
Despite a name that resembles *cough* a hair removal product but stands for virtual meetings, it does offer a very useful meeting environment that actually restrains the usual time wasters - it's very Swiss that way.
Of course it also depends what it is for.
Schools here in Portugal will use zoom after Easter (our youngest tested yesterday) and for that to be realistic it has to be free and work everywhere, including smartphones. No idea what alternatives exist.
We will set up an old iMac with Linux.
Schools here in Portugal will use zoom after Easter
hmm..
"Teachers in Singapore stop using Zoom after 'lewd' incidents"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52240251
"But one mother told local media that, during her daughter's geography lesson, obscene images appeared on screen, before two men asked girls to "flash".
Zoom told the BBC the company was "deeply upset" about the incidents."
What a tangled web they have woven. Fort Meade, Shanghai, Beijing and others all in the mix!
And no, we wouldn't use it either - although the interface is good - I did get a request to do so, and we did it via a clean machine with anonymous one time credentials over a VPN. What I find so bizarre is that Cheltenham allowed the government to use it!
"What I find so bizarre is that Cheltenham allowed the government to use it!"
I'm not sure that was the case - as reported here by our diligent vultures;
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/01/zoom_spotlight/
Paragraph in question:
Crucially, the use of the Zoom software is likely to have infuriated the security services, while also raising questions about whether the UK government has its own secure video-conferencing facilities. We asked GCHQ, and it told us that it was a Number 10 issue. Downing Street declined to comment.
We asked GCHQ, and it told us that it was a Number 10 issue. Downing Street declined to comment.
Any criticism by GCHQ would have resulted in punitive action by the new guard at the heart of government, like on appointments, budgets etc. Take for example the way they are restricting press access to favoured organisations
For many, many years the typical PC (WIndows or Mac or Linux) didn't bother with passwords. Oh, sure, you could set them, but why would you bother to protect files that were also sitting in the unlocked filing cabinet next to the PC?
Zoom is very, very good for many use cases. In my orbit, it seems like individuals generally use the free accounts, and "meeting organizers" (akin the admin folks who schedule conference rooms) have the paid-for versions. Operationally, it's no more or less secure than Webex was (back when it was usable, before Cisco decided to jam all sorts of junk down your throat): if you create a meeting without a password, people can join if they know the number, and if they know the number and the password they can join even if you create it with one.
Obviously, it's flaws have been thrust into the spotlight because of the sudden demand (and kudos to Zoom for scaling to meet it). But I'd guess that most of the alternatives have operational or architectural flaws that could be (theoretically) exploited...
Overall, who really cares if a 5th form remote learning session might have some information gathered that theoretically be shared to the Chinese?
<blockquote>Overall, who really cares if a 5th form remote learning session might have some information gathered that theoretically be shared to the Chinese?</blockquote>
Sure, information gathered may seem worthless now, but you have various indicators of wealth and status as well as raw data for building psychological profiles of the persons in the "classroom" that may well prove invaluable at a later date.
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