The social distancing saga continues and most recently that has presented new issues for users of the video conferencing app, Zoom. While Zoom is popularly known for hosting meetings for people working from Home or for E-Learning, a lot of people have become creative with social distancing, turning to Zoom in order to host bible studies, dinner parties, and even game nights with family or friends. According to TechCrunch.com, a popular daily public Zoom call (#WFHappyHour) was bombed with explicit imagery by a hacker via screen share. Although the perpetrator was kicked off the call, they were simply able to re-join the meeting using a new name and bombard call-goers with more disturbing imagery. Hosts of the meeting were forced to stop the call to end the hacker’s schemes. This is one example of a very large issue surrounding privacy and protection for Zoom users.

At this time, Zoom does not have a policy where users are required to grant permission for call-goers to share their screens. Fortunately, there are a few workarounds that we would like to share with you! Prior to a call, users should check their settings and complete the following tasks:

• Disable “Join Before Host” – this prevents troublemakers from joining the meeting ahead of time and causing issues before the host is able to moderate the call.
• Enable a “Co-Host” – this allows more than one person to help moderate the call.
• Disable “File Transfer” – this prevents viruses and other malware from being shared on the call.
• Disable “Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin” – this is self-explanatory but prevents callers from rejoining the meeting once they have been removed from the call.

As always, Holy Hill Media is your friendly neighborhood digital marketing agency, so hit us up if there is anything we can do to help!