Zoom Video - Are YOU the Free Product?

[Lurick]

Summary:

It would appear while many people are enjoying Zoom for the free meeting functionality there are now surfacing reports that perhaps it might not be all rainbows and sunshine for the "free" portion of the app. Just recently reports have started to surface that, when you dig into the privacy policy, you'll see something that leaves a lot to be desired in terms of user privacy. It would seem that Zoom is in the business of selling information to advertisers for users for their free

products which includes all sorts of identifying information.

 

Quote

This personal info includes, and is not limited to, names, addresses and any other identifying data, job titles and employers, Facebook profiles, and device specifications. Crucially, it also includes "the content contained in cloud recordings, and instant messages, files, whiteboards ... shared while using the service."

 

Thoughts:

They say when something is free that YOU are the product but this could spell a lot of trouble for Zoom in terms of privacy regulations such as HIPPA since they don't seem to discriminate between calls. If they are indeed collecting and selling off this kind of information there could be some huge implications just based on HIPPA alone, not to mention all the school calls/reports/etc and private business meetings that could have information collected from them as well. What the reports don't mention however is what about the paid users of Zoom and if they are subject to the same collections or not.

 

URLs:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/27/doc_searls_zoom_privacy/

https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2020/03/27/zoom/

https://www.consumerreports.org/video-conferencing-services/zoom-teleconferencing-privacy-concerns/

https://zoom.us/privacy

 

 

Edit:

As of March 27th the Facebook SDK has been removed but the question remains is there other data collection going on on the background to sell data to advertisers and how that data is being handled as well.

Quote

"The data collected by the Facebook SDK did not include any personal user information, but rather included data about users’ devices such as the mobile OS type and version, the device time zone, device OS, device model and carrier, screen size, processor cores, and disk space," Zoom's statement added, mirroring Motherboard's findings. Will Strafach, an iOS researcher and founder of privacy-focused iOS app Guardian also confirmed Motherboard's findings that the Zoom app sent data to Facebook at the time.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3b745/zoom-removes-code-that-sends-data-to-facebook

[schwellmo92]

And no one is surprised by this.

[RejZoR]

What's most absurd is how everyone is raging over Zoom and Zoom only. Especially since ALL apps on all app stores are riddled with this garbage from Google, Facebook and many others. Where is outrage over those? Just because someone pointed out Facebook SDK in Zoom and everyone lost their shit, but the other 99% of apps have all the same things integrated into apps and everyone's just fine with it because they are not aware of it. But it's all the same there, in ALL apps. It's hard to find any that is just an app without some 3rd party tracking garbage integrated. VERY HARD.

[Dietrichw]

When using it for my college classes I always join without making an account. I'm glad that my college does pay for the higher tier where everything "should" be encrypted.

[Lurick]

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

What's most absurd is how everyone is raging over Zoom and Zoom only. Especially since ALL apps on all app stores are riddled with this garbage from Google, Facebook and many others. Where is outrage over those? Just because someone pointed out Facebook SDK in Zoom and everyone lost their shit, but the other 99% of apps have all the same things integrated into apps and everyone's just fine with it because they are not aware of it. But it's all the same there, in ALL apps. It's hard to find any that is just an app without some 3rd party tracking garbage integrated. VERY HARD.

There is something to be said for tracking in general but if they are capturing from private conversations between a patient and doctor or private company information to push ads that's a different level especially if this information is personally identifiable and isn't stored safely.

[NDBroughton]

Zoom has in fact now updated their iOS app to remove the Facebook SDK.
 

Quote

“Zoom takes its users’ privacy extremely seriously. We originally implemented the ‘Login with Facebook’ feature using the Facebook SDK in order to provide our users with another convenient way to access our platform. However, we were recently made aware that the Facebook SDK was collecting unnecessary device data," Zoom told Motherboard in a statement on Friday.

Quote

"The data collected by the Facebook SDK did not include any personal user information, but rather included data about users’ devices such as the mobile OS type and version, the device time zone, device OS, device model and carrier, screen size, processor cores, and disk space," Zoom's statement added, mirroring Motherboard's findings. Will Strafach, an iOS researcher and founder of privacy-focused iOS app Guardian also confirmed Motherboard's findings that the Zoom app sent data to Facebook at the time.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3b745/zoom-removes-code-that-sends-data-to-facebook

[Guest]

Hope they enjoyed my presentation about Good Manufacturing Practice, requirements for pharmaceuticals. Half the audience fell asleep but I’m glad they liked it.

[justpoet]

An old one, but a good one.  Applies to just about every "free" online service.

[Taf the Ghost]

Someone a "Zoom has a privacy issue" still ended up back at "Facebook is incredibly evil". Unfortunately, not surprised.

[mr moose]

I don't think there is a product on the market that doesn't do this.  You have to pay for it some how as nothing is free.   Hell, even skype log/probe every URL you paste into it.

[Rolling2405]

11 hours ago, RejZoR said:

What's most absurd is how everyone is raging over Zoom and Zoom only. Especially since ALL apps on all app stores are riddled with this garbage from Google, Facebook and many others.

It's because Zoom is widely used by many businesses and schools especially right now since a lot of people are working from home because of COVID-19.  People and companies use it for meetings. 

[distantly_social]

They added the ability to change your background though #baitnswitch

[PhantomJaguarr]

1 hour ago, distantly_social said:

They added the ability to change your background though #baitnswitch

Explains what I saw the other day ....

[distantly_social]

They offer stupid features to distract you from the BS.

[GOTSpectrum]

If you don't pay for a product thats because you are most probably the product...

[Nowak]

You know how the saying goes.

 

I won't repeat it because several other members have said it already.

[AndreiArgeanu]

Stopped using facebook a long time ago to be honest and I have never used Zoom at all, not even made an account thankfully enough.

[Chubby_Chubby]

Zoom is definitely not the one. There are soo many data stealing, exposing apps.

[Zodiark1593]

I’d never heard of Zoom before the “Human Malware” became a thing. Looking up recent articles though, I wouldn’t use Zoom on any of my personal devices even if my employer told me to. 
 

Is there no open source video messaging software that a corporation an set up their own servers for? Using an x265 encoder (though this kills off weaker/older client devices), bandwidth shouldn’t be a big deal for corporate internet connections. Kind of like Mumble (unsure if TeamSpeak is FOSS)?

[NumLock21]

Too bad the majority of the people out there won’t care and have no idea why it’s a big deal. They’ll just say I got nothing to hide or have nothing important. 
 

[iSkyler]

I totally agree with you, people should pay for something they are gonna use this much for this or go with something more reputable. If you want to know why I think this I have a collection of reasons at http://www.quitzoom.com with sources too!

[Jito463]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:46 AM, Zodiark1593 said:

I’d never heard of Zoom before the “Human Malware” became a thing. Looking up recent articles though, I wouldn’t use Zoom on any of my personal devices even if my employer told me to. 

I'd vaguely heard of it, but never paid attention to it before this ridiculous shutdown.  I do use it on my desktop, because our church only uses that or FB, and I absolutely WON'T touch FB.  That said, I don't have any sort of account with them, and I won't install it onto anything that has a camera (so phone is out of the question).

[RejZoR]

What intrigues me more is how this no name thing became a thing. I get it that it apparently had some features other big didn't, but for the sake of safety and integrity, you'd expect schools would still pick Skype or Discord over Zoom. It's like wanting a VPN and you'd walk past ProtonVPN, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, PIA VPN, CyberGhost VPN and picked some VPN made by some no name company that has no ratings, no credentials or reputation and said yes, I made a logical choice there. That's exactly what happened with Zoom. I get it that you can't just be stuck and never use anything else but established stuff, but come on, some research and checks should be done when institutions like schools demand students to use it and potentially put millions of users into digital harm's way.

[Lurick]

49 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

What intrigues me more is how this no name thing became a thing. I get it that it apparently had some features other big didn't, but for the sake of safety and integrity, you'd expect schools would still pick Skype or Discord over Zoom. It's like wanting a VPN and you'd walk past ProtonVPN, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, PIA VPN, CyberGhost VPN and picked some VPN made by some no name company that has no ratings, no credentials or reputation and said yes, I made a logical choice there. That's exactly what happened with Zoom. I get it that you can't just be stuck and never use anything else but established stuff, but come on, some research and checks should be done when institutions like schools demand students to use it and potentially put millions of users into digital harm's way.

Zoom has actually been around for a bit but I think what really propelled them into the mainstream was they were the first big name to offer free video conferencing during the pandemic, ahead of Cisco, Microsoft, and others in the same space. Skype can be hit or miss and Discord doesn't offer video chat as far as I know so Zoom or Cisco/Microsoft Teams seems to be the next logical choice and, as I mentioned, with the free offer from Zoom that really put them out there as the 'go to'.

[Nowak]

4 hours ago, Lurick said:

Discord doesn't offer video chat as far as I know

Discord does, and they upped the limit for how many people can video chat at once so people can stay in touch during the pandemic