[imagesource: Peshkov/ iStock]

Since the coronavirus pandemic took hold, and businesses moved online, the video conferencing app Zoom has proven a popular choice for staying in touch.

Yes, their business is booming.

This has worked well in some situations, and not so well in others, especially when people forget how webcams work.

Then there are those who are spicing things up by changing the backgrounds on their chats. Nothing lets your boss know how seriously you take your job, like conducting your meeting from the Starship Enterprise.

For one company, though, Zoom is not going to cut it.

Per PCMag:

On March 28 SpaceX sent out an email to all of its 6,000+ employees telling them access to the Zoom video chat service had been disabled. The email stated, “We understand that many of us were using this tool for conferences and meeting support … Please use email, text or phone as alternate means of communication.” The stated reason given for disabling access to the service is, “significant privacy and security concerns.”

Criticism of the app isn’t new. In July last year, hackers used Zoom to spy on Mac users via their webcams. More recently, the tech-savvy trolls of the world started ‘Zoom-bombing’, or inserting themselves into Zoom calls that they weren’t invited to attend.

A group of pranksters was even organizing Zoom-bombs in a bid to raid online classes, record the disruption, and share the footage on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. The situation is bad enough that even the FBI is warning the public to watch out for Zoom chat hijackers.

Is anyone else over the predictability of trolls? It’s tiresome. But we digress – back to SpaceX:

SpaceX’s concerns over the security and privacy of the service are well-founded. Yesterday, Zoom apologized in a blog post for, “the confusion we have caused by incorrectly suggesting that Zoom meetings were capable of using end-to-end encryption … While we never intended to deceive any of our customers, we recognize that there is a discrepancy between the commonly accepted definition of end-to-end encryption and how we were using it.”

That’s not ideal. I’ll be sticking to Skype, thanks.

If you want to eliminate video calls completely and return to email, just remember that there are new ways to sign off now. 

I’d hate for you to be behind the times.

[source:pcmag]