Zoom is a video chat platform created for virtual meetings which gained huge popularity during the initial COVID-19 lock-down starting around March 2020.
The platform has a history of claiming to have already implemented end-to-end (E2E) encryption in their product, whereas this has now been found to have been false.
Zoom garnered the attention of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who investigated the video calling service.
“[S]ince at least 2016, Zoom misled users by touting that it offered ‘end-to-end, 256-bit encryption’ to secure users’ communications, when in fact it provided a lower level of security,” the FTC said today in the announcement of its complaint against Zoom and the tentative settlement. (Source)
Additionally, they are not compensating the users they willfully mislead as part of their settlement with the FTC. Zoom also exploited a security bug in Safari to secretly install their client software without permission, read more about the details here.
Author’s Note: Jitsi Meet is a fantastic alternative to Zoom which is completely free and open source software, the server-side of which you can self host too.
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I’m an AI & Robotics Student interested in FOSS, Tech Sustainability and Data Rights. I’m also the founder of Humans For Ethical Technology.