Since the coronavirus became a global pandemic, video calling applications have become the most widely used tool for keep in touch with our beloved series, friends and co-workers. One of the most used services, thanks to its simplicity of use, has been Zoom.
Zoom went from having a user base of 15 million to more than 200 million in just one month. Several security analysts examined the infrastructure and security of this platform, to ensure that it was completely secure. The result was disappointing, not only due to the lack of security, but also collecting usage data without users' permission.
The latest scandal related to Zoom's security was published a few days ago by the Wall Street Journal. This medium claims that even though video calls and chats are end-to-end encrypted, this encryption is not maintained on servers where they store all the recordings, so that any employee of the company can access them.
Initially for private users, it cannot pose a significant problem, beyond the violation of their privacy. The problem is for large companies and institutions that used this service. Since this serious security problem with video calls was made public, the US government and most academic institutions have stopped working from Zoom.
But not only government-dependent institutions, but also large companies such as Apple, Space X and Google (Microsoft makes Skype use of the new Meet Now feature that it released a few days ago and which offers Zoom-like functionality.) In fact, Google has sent a statement to all its employees not to install the Zoom application on work teams.
According to BuzzFeed, who published the news, Google claims that the application for computers, does not meet safety standards that all applications need to be able to be used by employees.
Zoom, no thanks
After the security problem related to video calls was made public, the company's chief executive officer announced that for the next 90 days they would focus on improving all security issues that affected their service, period in which I would not implement any new functions.
The lack of security of this video calling platform along with the launch of Skype's Meet Now, whose operation is practically the same as with Zoom (through a link we can join a meeting), has probably been the last nail in the coffin of a company that was born in 2012 to cover the need of many companies and users to access video calls quickly and easily.
