Zoom app is a platform where you can arrange a meeting via video calls and up to 100 people can join into a meeting. During this lockdown period, the government, as well as private employees, have to do their work from home. Also the students are attending classes through this app. Meetings and class lectures are going through this app. And for this purpose, the use of this Zoom app is increased in a few days.
Zoom is unsafe in India:
India said, “Zoom is not a safe platform” and advised not to use it for official works. The Cyber Co-ordination Centre of India’s ministry of home affairs said that “Zoom is not a safe platform,” in their 16 pages (PDF) advisory. In a statement, the Press Bureau of India said, “Platform not for use by government officers/officials for official purpose”. The centre maintains the app has significant weaknesses and indulges in dubious practices. Google ordered to all employee not to use the Zoom app from computers for security purpose and Singapore has banned the use of Zoom app for teaching. The app has also been banned in Germany, Singapore, and Taiwan.
For a Newspaper story, it had reported that more than 500,000 accounts data along with the passwords had been leaked by Dark Web. After these incidents hackers can easily access their email addresses and passwords.
The alternative of ZOOM:
There are alternatives to Zoom, such as Microsoft Teams, Skype, Whatsapp, FaceTime, Google Meet and Google Classroom. We are talking about features such as background change, face beautification, remote access to various desktops and most important, a large number of participants. There is end-to-end encryption only for Zoom text chats and video meetings are secured using TLS encryption.
In a statement, Zoom said, “Zoom will take user security extremely seriously. A large number of global institutions ranging from the world’s largest financial service companies and telecommunication providers to non-government organizations and government agencies, have done exhaustive security reviews of our user, network and data-centre layers and continue to use Zoom for most or all of their unified communications needs”. Zoom Chief executive Eric S. Yuan has apologized for the security lapses and pledged to prioritize focus on user’s privacy and security over development of new features. The firm recently hired former Facebook security officer Alex Stamos as an adviser.
You May Like:
Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) guidelines for safety purpose:
- Create a new user ID and password for each meeting.
- Create a waiting room in the app, so that a user will be able to enter the meeting only when the host gives him permission.
- Disable join features before hosting.
- Allowing screen sharing by Host only.
- Disabling “Allow removed participants to re-join”.
- It is recommended to restrict or disable file transfer.
- When all participants have joined, it has been advised to lock the meeting.
- Restrict the recording feature.
- If you are an administrator then end the meeting without leaving it.
Follow the above steps before using Zoom, Even not only Zoom for every application you have follow the above information.