Zoom is set to update with a new feature designed to block those who disrupt chats. Here's how it works
As of April 26, the Zoom video calling and video conferencing platform could become a safer, cleaner place. As announced in recent weeks by the founder and CEO of Zoom Eric Yuan in an interview with CNN, in fact, are coming the first measures against the "zoombombing"
That is the annoying practice that consists in sneaking into a public video call to pronounce swear words, insults or profanity or to perform obscene acts such as projecting pornographic material. We are not yet at the possibility of blocking a single user, but we could get there soon if the new feature introduced by the developers of Zoom should have the desired effects. It is, in essence, a report of profiles that make zoombombing to which, subsequently, could follow a ban. But it won't be up to the user to decide that.
Ban on Zoom, how it works
Account owners and Meeting administrators on Zoom will be able to enable a setting to allow the host to report call participants. This feature will generate a report that will be sent to the Zoom Trust and Safety team, who will evaluate any misuse of the platform and may even go so far as to block the disruptive user if deemed necessary. The ability to report an account to the Zoom team will be introduced in the version of the client that will be released on April 26, 2020.
Zoom boom
Zoom experienced exponential growth in March and April, due to the boom in smart working and video calls, replacing face-to-face meetings that are no longer possible due to social distancing. The problem, however, is that the app was not at all ready for such a fast and unexpected success and, in fact, its limitations emerged immediately. Zoombombing, for example, stems from a trivial oversight: until a few days ago, the data to access a video call was shown on the app's main screen and, as a result, anyone who shared a screenshot of the video call did nothing but spread the (open) door to come in and disturb. A second problem, then, is the security of the data transmitted on Zoom: the encryption was judged by several experts to be too weak and, therefore, starting with the next version of the Zoom client it will be replaced by a much stronger AES-256 encryption.