Zoombombing: what is it and how you can prevent your conference calls from being zoombombed

Amid this Covid-19 lockdown, the use of video conferencing software has seen a rapid rise- be it work-related, teaching or just socializing. Our use of video chats has increased and with it, the security concerns have risen diligently.

One such software “Zoom”, which is quite popular for video conferencing has been drawing attention from security researchers and journalists recently over privacy and security issues. Even United States investigative agency FBI issued a warning to the citizens to be cautious while using zoom app citing cases of zoombombing where calls were interrupted by “pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language,” and the agency also asked the software companies to practice “due diligence and caution” in their security measures.

 Zoombombing is an incident when your video conference calls are interrupted by unwanted/uninvited attendee and disrupts the meet. 

Measures by Zoom to prevent Zoombombing

On Wednesday, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan published a blog post addressing these security concerns. He mentioned that Zoom will freeze feature updates and focus on coming up with security solutions for the next 90 days. Quoting to dedicate these ninety days to “the resources needed to better identify, address and fix issues proactively.” He wrote that these initiatives will focus on “conducting a comprehensive review with third-party experts and representative users to understand and ensure the security of all of our new consumer use cases,” according to the post.

Steps you can take to prevent “Zoombombing” 

There are some simple settings you can change on your Zoom app for your calls from being interrupted by unwanted individuals.

1. Don’t use your personal meeting ID, instead use a pre-meeting ID exclusive for that meeting. There are Zoom tutorials to help you understand how to generate a random meeting ID for a meeting. 
2.  Enable the “waiting room” feature in Account Management. It will allow you to see who is attempting to join the meeting and give them access. 
3. Once the meeting begins and everyone is in it, lock the meeting to outsiders. 
4.  Make sure you don’t publish or post the meeting ID on public platforms. 
5.  If any outsider does barge in- 

You can lock them out by going to Participants List in the navigation sidebar, scroll to more and click to Lock Meeting. You can also shut them up, by clicking on Mute all control in the Participants List.