How quickly the ground shifted on Zoom. Since March 30th the video conferencing app has been exposed by gaping security and privacy vulnerabilities. The impact on higher education is immense and must be addressed swiftly.
Zoom’s security and privacy vulnerabilities are deal breakers for higher education. Why? The online journal Inside Higher Ed shared shocking news: Dissertation Defense on Zoom Interrupted by Racist Attack. Yes, the ’N word’ was zoombombed at Cal State Long Beach during a dissertation defense. Educause links to multiple zoombombing articles.
Stunningly, multiple campus zoombombings quickly followed prompting the FBI to issue this warning: Teleconferencing and Online Classroom Hijacking During COVID-19 Pandemic addressing concerns across higher education. Yet, The Chronicle of Higher Education returns NO articles about Zoombombing.
These two events instantly change any campus conversation that all is well using Zoom. A Zoom cool factor was going viral just as Coronavirus closed down all higher education colleges. Students can sway easily via online trends.
Look at Zoom’s March 18th Collection of your Personal Data privacy statement:
Zoom gathers and sells to data brokers very personal information of your students and colleagues. Add the orange hi-lighted scraping of your campus network data and asset information.
Remember when an app is free many times you become the product. Zoom (NASDAQ) has been operating for nine years.
I know what you are thinking — how did this happened?
Many colleges had no idea Zoom was reckless with the data security and privacy of our students. Prior to coronavirus Zoom had about 12 million users. By late March this jumped to over 100 million. Instant capacity issues.