The narrative running alongside Zoom’s rise to popularity during social distancing is that the platform is also facing staggering privacy issues, but those issues are not exclusive to Zoom. This transition to working from home has more people than ever before scrutinizing the policies of video chat systems and they’re unearthing some wild results.
Zoom is really great at what it does, and its monumental ascension is warranted. However, its problems are so difficult to ignore, because it’s so big these days. Zoombombing is a major problem and the trends it created are worrisome enough to spread to other platforms, but that’s not even the only issue. There was the dishonesty and poor messaging around encryption, the bevy of back-end holes discovered by hackers years before the pandemic, and things like the platform only just now adding a report option less than two weeks ago.
However, Zoom is not the only video conferencing tool with privacy drama. Consumer Reports ran an investigation and published its findings on every major video chat program: Skype, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Google Meet (as well as Google’s Duo and Hangouts). This resulted in them discovering that every one of those platforms collects data from video conferences and uses it to build consumer profiles. Their privacy policies also grant them the ability to use people’s webcam captures for facial recognition software.
The report mentions that each company responded to questions about those policies saying they don’t sell or rent collected data to any other company. That means that while we don’t know what exactly they intend to do with those profiles, it probably has something to do with selling people things, especially considering that all of the parent companies involved with these apps sell either software or computer electronics.
How to Protect Yourself from Privacy & Security Holes
The approaches toward improving security will differ from those aimed at improving privacy, but the good part is everyone has some control over both. Security threats, things like uninvited guests showing up on calls, are very easy to manage with a little bit of preparation. The biggest things are to make sure invites are sent manually and to give chat rooms passwords. Zoom is probably the most “open” of all the big-name chat platforms, so it’s hard to ensure a password shared with potential guests won’t leak, but its waiting room feature still offers a chance to vet new members. Just pay attention to the security options, use passwords, and it should be fine.
Privacy threats like surreptitious data collection are tougher to manage because we’re required to agree to terms to use these services. One way to minimize those risks is to only use one. Find a platform that works for the group’s needs and stick to it, rather than spreading information and log-ins across services and companies. This is great for two reasons. The first is that personal data is simply more contained. The second is the more login credentials people have, the more likely they are to get lazy with passwords. No one wants to memorize multiple passwords for different, similar apps, and while this is an issue that a password keeper program can help solve, the best solution is just to avoid this scenario altogether.
Finally, just assume someone is recording you. Don’t needlessly provide personal info or unnecessarily involve family members or personal habits. Turn off the camera or mute the microphone when conversations happen outside of chat. Use the text chat to send things like residential or email addresses.
