For several years now, there has been a great demand for video communication in the world. Apart from those who lock themselves in messengers, people began to love more relatively “live” communication. They no longer have enough just to speak in a voice and want to look at the other person. This is especially true when several people communicate. Therefore, recently there has been an explosive growth in communications such as Skype, Face Time and Zoom. The latter somehow most actively began to recruit its audience. The only problem with a large number of users is that they have to somehow manage to keep their data secret. The Zoom service failed to do this and allowed a large leak of user accounts.
Zoom is not bad, but not secure.
Are Zoom meetings safe?
It's no secret that the more you have, the more others want you to share with them. This is especially true in relation to data warehouses. If you have a lot of user data, you will be constantly attacked and they will try to “rob” you. In the age of information technology, the most important resource is information.
For example, now everyone is sitting at home due to the coronavirus pandemic. At this time, those who work from home or simply miss their friends and family begin to look for new ways to communicate with them. American Zoom has become one of the most popular services against this background. If before the pandemic it had tens of millions of users, now it is already hundreds of millions. To be honest, before I knew about the service only that it actually exists, and now I even started using it for work.
The service growth statistics are impressive.
200 million of those using Zoom are now at risk. It became clear that the American service from San Jose had become almost a tool for spying on users. Therefore, many should think about whether they want to continue using such a tool.
According to the German newspaper Heise, the US authorities are interested in the work of the service. There is information that “on the side” the credentials of users are merged, including the data of their accounts in Facebook. User data is also leaked iOS, but in this case the leak is limited to the data of the Zoom account itself.
Vulnerabilities have already been discovered in the service. For example, about a year ago, a security hole allowed hackers to join your conference and eavesdrop on your conversation. True, this vulnerability surfaced only now, in the wake of the growing popularity and wide discussion of the service.
The fact is that Zoom is installed on a computer and gets wide access to systems and accessories. This makes it easy for hackers to hack it all together and also gain access to the camera, microphone, and contents of your computer's drive, if desired.
Thus, we can say that Zoom was not ready for such an increase in popularity. And at the same time, hackers will begin to show even more interest in the service, and the public will become much more closely monitoring its errors. As a result, the company's shares almost doubled in a short period of time, and after reports of hacker attacks experienced a sharp drop.
Why everyone uses Zoom
Zoom markets itself as 'the market leader in meeting solutions'. Against the background of global isolation, it proved itself not only as a business tool, but also as an excellent means for people to communicate with each other.
The reason for its massive popularity may be that those who used this tool only from the office now use it at home to communicate with colleagues. This was the impetus for the development of popularity and Zoom went beyond just business communication.
Many people love Zoom, while others simply have to use it.
It also plays into the hands of the fact that even in the free version, up to a hundred people can connect to the conference. True, conferences are now limited in time. The limit is 40 minutes, and this was done in order to reduce the load on the service.
Another important advantage is that it is enough to send a link to the invited person to invite to the conference. He opens it and immediately joins the conversation. True, not only a guest, but also a hacker can join.
Why is user data stolen?
I gave the answer to this question just above. Nowadays, everyone needs information. At the same time, you should not think that your conversations about how you watched the TV series or prepared a new dish are interesting to someone. Serious business conversations are of real interest. These conversations may be of interest to competitors. Here it will really be unpleasant if someone else hears it. The rest of the hackers simply won't waste time, even if they accidentally connect to them.
You can use this service, but keep in mind security concerns.
From ordinary people, hackers are much more interested in getting their email and associated account data. This can be used for promotional mailings. After they build the base, they sell it. The price varies from a couple of rubles to several tens of rubles for one account. Those who buy them can already use them for their intended purpose. Someone sends ads, and someone tries to hack more serious accounts. For example, Google or iCloud. Considering that users often use the same login and password, this is an additional vulnerability.
How to install Zoom
If you still want to install Zoom, you just need to go to the manufacturer's website and download the version for your computer. After that, all that remains is to register and start using. I described how to do this in a separate article.
If you want to install Zoom on your smartphone or just don't want to search for the app in the store, here are the download links. You will also need to just download the application, register and chat. Most importantly, be careful and keep in mind everything I wrote about in this article.
Download Zoom for Android
Download Zoom for iOS