AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Bigger picture synonym3/21/2023 Well, that’s not quite right, at least if by “end to end” you mean encryption where the service provider has no way of decrypting the content (as, say, with WhatsApp or Signal). Any host of a meeting can “secure a meeting with end-to-end encryption”. “We take security seriously and we are proud to exceed industry standards when it comes to your organisation’s communications,” says the Zoom website. The only inference one can draw is that nobody in the company had actually read Facebook’s terms and conditions for the SDK – which say: “We can analyse your app, website, content, and data for any purpose, including commercial.” Then there’s the issue of security, and of encryption in particular. As the veteran analyst Ben Thompson observed in his newsletter, Zoom clearly had no idea what data Facebook was collecting. The level of carelessness implied by “we were made aware” is staggering. “We were made aware on Wednesday, March 25, 2020,” it wrote, “that the Facebook SDK was collecting device information unnecessary for us to provide our services.” Ponder that for a moment. But then it blew the gaff on its corporate blog. It did quickly update the app and stopped the data transfer. This was all part of the Get Big Fast rule, no doubt, but the way Zoom handled the disclosure was not exactly reassuring. This stemmed from a decision by Zoom to use Facebook’s Software Development Kit (SDK) to provide a “Login with Facebook” facility – ostensibly to make it easier for new users to sign up. An investigation by Motherboard revealed that the Zoom iOS app was sending data to Facebook even if the user didn’t have a Facebook account. The first of these involve Zoom’s relationship with Facebook. And it’s clear that the service is a boon for people in the isolation zones of most countries at the moment, so it’s adding tangible social value to our lives.īut some things about it need to be fixed, or at least clarified. I prefer it to alternatives such as Skype, FaceTime and Microsoft Teams for larger conferences, partly because of the way it “foregrounds” the person who happens to be speaking at any moment. I write as a satisfied Zoom user – correction: customer, because I pay for the service. To these has now been added a new problem of ‘Zoombombing’, where occasionally families and groups have had their discussions interrupted by trolls broadcasting pornography, Nazi propaganda and other crap. As with all such ‘free’ internet services, Zoom has had its share of anti-social uses – child abuse, porn and privacy violations, for example. If you want longer meetings, you have to pay for it. At the moment Zoom offers free video conferencing for up to 100 participants, with a 40-minute time limit. The way to do that is to offer your service free – with the option of charging for superior services. Zoom followed rule No 1 in the playbook for internet companies: get big fast. Zoom clearly had no idea what data Facebook was collecting
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |