Zoom have been fined 85 million USD by the Federal Trade Commission:
The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Zoom in November 2020 after The Intercept exposed these holes in Zoom’s service. As a result, Zoom agreed to security improvements and a “prohibition on privacy and security misrepresentations”. Now, on 7 July 2021, Zoom has also agreed to pay an $85 million settlement, including compensation for those who were affected by these security shortcomings. People who are entitled to compensation will receive between just $15 and $25 each if the settlement is approved in court.
The maximum compensation of $25 doesn’t reflect the extent to which Zoom misled the people who used its services, nor the gravity of the potential consequences of doing so.
Zoom told its users that their video calls were end-to-end encrypted when actually they were protected by TLS encryption. Zoom generated and stored the keys to its users’ encrypted information on its servers rather than on its users’ devices, meaning anyone with access to those servers could monitor the unencrypted video and audio content of Zoom meetings. These servers are located around the world, often in countries where companies can be forced to share user data with law enforcement organizations.
What’s worse is that, according to the most recent lawsuit, Zoom’s response made it clear that it “knew that it did not use the industry-accepted definition of E2E encryption and had made a conscious decision to use the term ‘end-to-end’ anyway”.
What can you do about this to protect your data and yourself?
You can request that Zoom delete any and all information they hold on you. Information on your data rights and how to get in contact with Zoom to request they erase your data can be found in their privacy policy. Once you have made the request, follow up to ensure you get confirmation that your data has been removed from their servers.
Another way to protect your data is to never sign in using Facebook. Although it may save you time, it gives Zoom a lot more of your personal data, as well as giving more data to Facebook.
Zoom are actually pretty fast at answering you if you don't have an account with them. Remember to e-mail them from the e-mail address that you're inquiring about.
Zoom have broken promises over and over again, lied to users, obeys zionist interests to censor Palestinian users, and installed spyware on computers that required Apple to take charge. Companies can mess up and do bad things: that's fine as long as they take accountability and learn from their mistakes. This does not apply to Zoom, who lie and cheat, again and again.
As usual, don't use Zoom. Use Jitsi Meet or a lot of other truly secure technologies that are made by people who, unlike Zoom, don't lie to you.