According to a report, the number of people using zoom daily increased from 10 million to 200 million. Zoom grew popular as the global population has become increasingly home bound in an effort to limit the spread of corona virus. But the company was not organised or equipped enough for the rapid growth of its user base. Zoom has offered guidance and help but many users have been unsatisfied with the company’s response.
On Tuesday, Chipotle was forced to end a public Zoom chat that the brand had co-hosted with musician Lauv after one participant began broadcasting pornography and kept shouting the N-Word to hundreds of attendees. Tressie Lieberman the vice president of digital at Chipotle wrote in an email that they encountered an unwanted ‘Zoom raid’ during of their sessions and they have decided to move their latest performances to a different platform.
‘Zoom raiding’ is a problem where unwanted participants find their way into meetings and sometimes post inappropriate content. It is also known as ‘Zoom bombing’. Zoom raiders often employ shocking imagery, racial epithets and profanity to derail video conferences. Though a meeting organizer can remove a participant at any time, the predator of these attacks can be hard to identify; there may be several in a single call. The frequency and reach of the incidents on zoom prompted the FBI to issue warning on Tuesday.
On zoom there is a default setting that allows any meeting participant share their screen without permission from the event host. Anyone who has a link to a public meeting can join, the intruders are taking advantage of this facility. Also, Links are traded in Facebook groups and discord chats. Zoom raids are planned on services such as Discord, communication platform popular among gamers.
Jeff, a 39 years A.A. member in Los Angeles, said that he had attended 30 meeting using Zoom. Every meeting had been interrupted by an online turmoil. Videos of Zoom harassment have begun to appear on YouTube and Twitch.
How to prevent zoom raids
1. Do not make meetings or classrooms public. Use the waiting room feature and control the admittance of guests or make the meeting private as they require a meeting password.
2. Do not share a link to a teleconference on social media posts. Provide the link directly to specific users.
3. Manage screen sharing options. Change it to “Host Only”.
4. Ensure using the updated version of meeting applications. In their security, the teleconference site added passwords by default for meetings, disabled the ability to randomly scan to join meetings and many other security measures were included.
5. Locking the meetings so that no new attendees can join can help prevent intrusion.
6. Put the participants on waiting list so that the host can control who can and cannot join the meeting
If you were a victim of a teleconference hijacking or any cyber-crime for that matter, report it to the FBI’s internet crime complaint center at icg.gov. Also if you receive a specific threat during a teleconference, please report it to the FBI at tips.fbi.gov or call the FBI Boston Division at (857)386-2000.
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