How to Safely Zoom into Digital Meetings and Events

In my last article, I wrote about how remote trials are being tested in Florida to ensure civil suits are still being conducted while we are in quarantine due to COVID-19. I also mentioned Zoom as one of the platforms courts may use to conduct these trials, but more has come up recently that may put into question the reliability of Zoom and the safety of the platform.

In recent news, Zoom users in all fields of work have experienced infiltrations of their meetings by hackers. In a Florida courtroom, this led to offensive music and pornographic video being streamed into a hearing, and a Petersburg council meeting was interrupted by similar displays. Lora Beth Johnson, an author who just hosted a virtual tour for her book Goddess in the Machine, also experienced this when hackers filled her chatroom and private messages with hate speech and sexual content. She is a college professor as well, and she never had an issue conducting her classes over Zoom. What makes these events so different?

For one, most of these events are open to the public. Anyone can attend, and these meetings are often not protected. This allows for a larger audience, which is great for court hearings and book tours that are designed to keep the public informed or to allow people to interact with people or causes they care about. However, this idea of allowing anyone in also leaves the door open to Zoom-bombings, as these infiltrations have been termed.

One common way people try to protect themselves from this is by creating a meeting ID password for the event. Anyone who wants to attend is presented with a login screen once they click on the host’s event link, and they must enter these credentials before they are allowed into the event itself. However, this information is often shared on public platforms, such as Facebook event pages or other social media channels, giving hackers just as much access to this information as those who are actually interested.

A way to guarantee that only those with good intentions are a part of your Zoom event is by utilizing the waiting room function. The waiting room shows the event hosts the names of those who are waiting to join their meeting, and the host can manually let people in. This is a great function if there is already a list of attendees prepared so the hosts can ensure those attending have already RSVP’d. It can also prevent a meeting from becoming overcrowded if there is only a set number of attendees allowed.

There are many other solutions to prevent these Zoom-bombings as well, such as muting participants when they enter a meeting, disabling screen sharing, and consistently moderating comments and the list of attendees, but a lot of the responsibility falls on Zoom itself.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan launched a 90-day program to address the platform’s key privacy and security concerns once these Zoom-bombings became more prevalent, and so far much has been done in this regard. However, with how quickly and how enormously Zoom began to take off, not everything that was promised has yet been provided.

What is missing is a transparency report, which will include “information related to requests Zoom receives for data, records, or content.” This report was originally scheduled to be released on June 30th, but it has been moved to “later this year” and has also been altered to include fiscal Q2 data as well.

These tips, combined with Zoom’s increased efforts to protect their users, should ensure that your next event is a safe one. Whether the event is a court hearing, a book tour, or a trivia night, no one should feel unsafe or scared using a platform that is designed for them.