Zoom, the video conferencing app everyone is using, faces questions over privacy
CNNCNN Business — The coronavirus outbreak has seen millions of people ordered to stay in their homes flock to Zoom, using the video conference app for everything from brunches and birthday parties to religious events and even a UK cabinet meeting. New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to Zoom on Monday asking whether the company “is taking appropriate steps to ensure users’ privacy and security,” a spokesman for James’s office told CNN Business. “Zoom takes its users’ privacy, security, and trust extremely seriously,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. The revelation led to two Zoom users separately filing class action lawsuits against the company in a Northern California district court this week, with one suit alleging that the video app “has failed to safeguard the personal information of the increasing millions of users of its software” and the other claiming it gave them “no opportunity to express or withhold consent to Zoom’s misconduct.” The lawsuits accuse Zoom of collecting users’ personal information and sharing it with third parties, including Facebook, without properly notifying the users. Some security experts have expressed doubts about Zoom’s claim that it offers “end-to-end encryption for all meetings.” Instead, Zoom uses something called transport encryption, which only secures the message while it’s en route from a video chat to the company’s servers, according to David Kennedy, founder of cybersecurity firm TrustedSec and a former cyberwarfare specialist with the United States Marine Corps.