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The software company’s new “At-Risk Meeting Notifier” scans the internet to find signs of impending Zoom-bombs, then takes action.
The software company’s new “At-Risk Meeting Notifier” scans the internet to find signs of impending Zoom-bombs, then takes action.
According to recent reports, Zoom has been scanning social media posts and other snippers for Zoom meeting links and/or passwords. These are generally signs of preparation for Zoom infiltrations or hijacks, which, if detected, Zoom will notify the account holder.
This whole thing is part of Zoom’s new “At-Risk Meeting Notifier,” which has recently been developed to alert account owners by email, then providing advice on what to do next.
These scans compare your (or the account owner’s) Zoom meeting ID against Zoom meeting information across the internet.
There’s been no information on how often or how far Zoom searches, but it’s worked so far for many people. Even with that however, there’s still a likely large number of people that weren’t protected by this new software in time.
To prevent unnecessary actions, like if someone put up a link for their audience, Zoom explained that “if a given meeting is posted about many times or with certain known disruptor hashtags, we may flag it to you as being at high risk of being disrupted.”
If you receive an alert from Zoom’s ARMN, the company will recommend that you convert the meeting to a webinar, allowing some control over participants, schedule a new meeting with a new ID, or enable some security safeguards.
While Zoom hasn’t revealed which social media networks it’s been scanning, the majority of Zoom bombings come from Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok, most in hopes of crashing video sessions.
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While this feature is useful, it doesn’t cover every Zoom bombing, and the company covered that, with some tricks if your meeting does become hijacked.
If the meeting becomes disrupted, another new Zoom software, “suspend participant activities,” allows the host to pause the video session or disable certain items that participants can normally use.
Hosts can access this feature through the Security Icon button at the top, which then results in the sessions coming to a halt, leaving the host with the ability to remove participants before restarting the meeting.
Zoom says “When the meeting is suspended, all video, audio, in-meeting chat, screen sharing, and recording will stop during that time, and breakout rooms will end; Once the host or co-host has reported a user, they may re-enable the features they’d like to use.”
After a Zoom user is reported or suspended, a company trust or safety employee will review the incident, and decide whether or not to permanently block the user from the Zoom service.
In the past, only Zoom hosts could report users, but now meeting participants can report users as well, with account owners and admins able to “enable reporting capabilities for non-hosts in their web settings.”
If this feature is enabled, any participants are able to report users by clicking the Security Badge in the top left during video meetings.
This is a great step for Zoom, who’s recently been in trouble with federal agencies over its lack of security features, and lies about said features.
Zoom has added end-to-end encryption recently, with this scanning and reporting software added as well.
This feature helps significantly increase the security of Zoom’s meetings, and helps get the company and some of the people using its platform out of trouble.
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