Until a few weeks ago, Zoom was barely known outside of the world of enterprise IT. But now it is everywhere. Schools and hospitals have it, before being taken into intensive care the U.K. prime minister spoke to the cabinet through it, even my mum’s ukulele group uses it. Zoom has added more customers in the last month than it did in the previous year.
In many ways this is surprising. The videoconferencing market is saturated with big names. Yet somehow, over the last few weeks, Zoom has become synonymous with videoconferencing. […]
Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan calls Zoom a “privacy disaster,” filled with “creepy” features that send tracking data to Facebook even if you don’t have a Facebook account and tell meeting hosts if attendees aren’t paying attention. Zoom’s privacy policy allows it to use what it calls “customer content” for advertising purposes. Put into normal English: Zoom can take the video from your private calls and use it to sell ads. “That’s probably not what people are expecting when they contact a therapist, hold a business meeting, or have a job interview using Zoom,” Consumer Reports said. A Harvard researcher published four posts on Zoom’s security and privacy issues. A full list of the issues, exploits, oversights, and dubious choices Zoom has made runs to thousands of words.
Warning: Zoom Makes Encryption Keys In China (Sometimes)
“Zoom, the videoconferencing giant that’s gained huge popularity in the work-from-home coronavirus age, handles user data in China, according to researchers. That information, on occasion, also includes encryption keys, the chunks of data that can unlock conversations, even if the participants aren’t based in China, the academics found in their tests of the software. ”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/04/03/warning-zoom-sends-encryption-keys-to-china-
sometimes/#6457a4b03fd9
My 1st Grade Teacher wife has been effectively ORDERED by her School District and the State Superintendent of education (a Newsom sycophant) to use ZOOM to host daily classroom teaching. ALL of her devices, 2 laptops, and iPad have ZOOM on them now … as do all her children … including a quarter of her class that are “too poor to own a laptop, or streaming internet” … who have been GIVEN those things by the State. They’re all being tracked now … and by extension … I am being tracked … for emailing and texting my wife.
Oh! And her entire school district is on Google Docs … everything she does for her classroom is sent straight to big brother google … in the cloud … the happy, shiny, cloud
I try to hide (no facquebook acct. no Google use) … but who am I fooling?
Zoom appears to be Chinese spyware, there is no end to end encryption on it, etc…
great for 5 guys having a beer, but don’t use it for anything confidential.
Zoom is controlled by the damned Chicoms. Nothing good ever comes out of China. Nothing. F*ck China. China is asshole.
If really feels like someone orders the world around, removing the concept of privacy from every area. Some, including myself, have been screaming about this for years, only to be subjected to a sophisticated trolling campaign by extremely witty and eloquent trolls who obviously had been trained in using the language to deride skeptics. This is a globally orchestrated, decade-long effort. Redhat, Canonical, Mozilla, and many other “open-source” “free software” vendors, needless to say commercial vendors such as MS, IBM, Oracle, and many affiliated companies have professional anti-privacy trolls on payroll. Independent, privacy oriented software frequently disappears w/o leaving a trace, and its developers cannot be contacted, while shady software from obscure sources appear to have virtually unlimited advertising budgets and clout that allows them to penetrate any markets, including such where violations of privacy bear criminal sanctions.
To our webmaster: Skype has a back door in it. The product was originally ChiCom and was purchased by Microsoft and included in Windows 10, but contrary to popular belief, Microsoft does not fix bugs in products that it purchases and the back door still exists (there are still bugs in SQL Server which came with the product from Sybase). I know this because I have seen an image of a hacker on my screen when I was taking martial arts lessons remotely and an image of an Oriental gentleman in a hoodie appeared on my screen in the middle of the lesson, then disappeared. I could tell when the hacker was observing by a slight change in video quality (due to stolen bandwidth) and screen aspect. And this was after the Microsoft purchase of the product. So the article is wrong in recommending it as a safe product – it is not.
Fake news.
I’ve using Skype since day one. It’s Estonian and it’s built on Kazaa.
https://techland.time.com/2011/05/10/a-brief-history-of-skype/
Skype is also great for transferring files on a home network.
https://hosting.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/.highres/home.jpg
It appears that Zoom is almost as invasive as Trudeau’s Covid-19 tracker app.
The British Cabinet uses Zoom for conferencing…
Citrix GoToMeeting is my recommendation. Sorry, it’s not free.
Just read via my company’s Intranet that they are strongly discouraging its use on company devices. Now my whackadoodle sister in law (who I absolutely despise) wants to set up a zoom session for the family this Sunday. Not a chance. Moron.
Zoom is simply more stable than Skype and seems to take way less space on the computer.
Interesting how Kate threatens some posters, but she keeps UnMe around regardless.
Is UnMe her bot?
“Interesting how Kate threatens some posters”.
Go away you cowardly pheasant plucker.
Interesting how Kate is our host and you are not.
If you feel entitled to push your host around,perhaps you need to start your own blog.
This is so funny! “I am pushing the host around” Read it again and if you have any intelligence, you should realize how laughable your assertion is. She owns the resource and she can ban anyone by name or IP. A commenter pushing the admin around is a ludicrous concept.
This and other replies are sadly very typical for “conservatives” online. As soon as someone criticizes you, you get your pants in a knot and respond with personal attacks and insults, thus demonstrating that you are incapable of civilized debate, and that you can be ignored and written off. Learn to take critique like adults, especially when it is not directed at you and is none of your business.
Yes, as recently as a couple day ago Kate has threatened everyone with bans for off-topic commenting, as if Internet would have burst from another couple hundred bytes. I am not going to go back and quote, but it was worded in such terms as obey, or I will blow you out of water. This was a threat. My assessment of that remark is spot on. Now, rebuke me.
I have a blog. I delete posts. I ban trolls. And when I threaten them, I acknowledge that I do. I do not try to hide the intent of my threat to revoke the commenting privilege – my threat is a threat.
But the bottom line is that if “small c conservatives” do not practice what they preach, they will be successfully and legitimately dismissed by the left. This has been happening for the past 50 or so years, but the “small c conservatives” have not learned the lesson. The left de-platforms, the right de-platforms. How different are they then?
“Zoom is simply more stable than Skype and seems to take way less space on the computer.”
Please back that up with some
seemsfactsHow is Zoom “simply more stable”?
Skype on a stick.
http://www.gruups.com/usbskype/