A Feature on Zoom Secretly Displayed Data From People's LinkedIn Profiles (nytimes.com) 39
After an inquiry from The New York Times reporters, Zoom said it would disable a data-mining feature that could be used to snoop on participants during meetings without their knowledge. From a report: For Americans sheltering at home during the coronavirus pandemic, the Zoom videoconferencing platform has become a lifeline, enabling millions of people to easily keep in touch with family members, friends, students, teachers and work colleagues. But what many people may not know is that, until Thursday, a data-mining feature on Zoom allowed some participants to surreptitiously access LinkedIn profile data about other users -- without Zoom asking for their permission during the meeting or even notifying them that someone else was snooping on them. The undisclosed data mining adds to growing concerns about Zoom's business practices at a moment when public schools, health providers, employers, fitness trainers, prime ministers and queer dance parties are embracing the platform. An analysis by The New York Times found that when people signed in to a meeting, Zoom's software automatically sent their names and email addresses to a company system it used to match them with their LinkedIn profiles.
So... (Score:2)
Why not ditch social media and give ALL of them a big goose egg when they search for you on social media?
The knives are really out for Zoom (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's astroturfing, Zoom is doing extremely well in the stocks and people are trying to manipulate the market.
- It is a Zoom plugin, basically you share your e-mail address with someone, the plugin automatically looks up whether you have a LinkedIn.
- If you pay for Zoom, you can manipulate the data being shared over even get a HIPAA BA, so doctors and hospitals remain safe
- Similar features exist on Slack, Office365, Salesforce pretty much any cloud platform you can think of
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Zoom is a no-go for me (Score:2)
Zoom is addressing all the issues pretty quickly, or so it seems. However, all these issues show a company that uses any means to make money and I donâ(TM)t see how that will change in the future.
Iâ(TM)m not going to use Zoom unless I can help it.....
I've not tried Zoom yet (Score:5, Funny)
I'm looking for a new service that can skim my personal data then leak it or have it hacked. Is Zoom the best for this, or would you recommend a better alternative?
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Can they leak more than my LinkedIn profile? I'm looking for something that could leak tax returns or my medical history. I'm kind of tired of the usual trash that can do little more than leak revealing pictures of my ex-girlfriend.
Re:I've not tried Zoom yet (Score:5, Funny)
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Use Zoom in W10 for double power. ;P
Re:I've not tried Zoom yet (digression) (Score:1)
Vaguely related question this just reminded me has been lurking in the back of my mind: Has any/much of this Win10 telemetry been backported to Win7?
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I'm looking for a new service that can skim my personal data then leak it or have it hacked. Is Zoom the best for this, or would you recommend a better alternative?
Well, Facebook is still probably in the lead but at least everyone knows that they're shit. With Zoom you can have a teleconferenced class of elementary students and have it Zoom-bombed with porn or cock pics. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/a... [buzzfeednews.com]
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Just goes from bad to worse (Score:3)
for Zoom.
What if you don't have a LinkedIn profile? does it display...
"This sad sack has no friends."
Can we turn the spotlight on Skype next? Since MS took over it has sucked.
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What if you don't have a LinkedIn profile? does it display...
"This sad sack has no friends."
No. Zoom will just share your Facebook data [slashdot.org] instead.
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Share your FB data?
And what if you are one of those who refuse to be on FartBook, Twatter or WhatSap etc?
Do you get the Sad Sac message then?
Obligatory Zoom Response (Score:3)
"We take privacy extremely seriously"
LOL
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This one seems kinda like bullshit to me. Zoom isn't "data mining" in this case, Zoom is simply showing PUBLICLY AVAILABLE LinkedIn information. People who use LinkedIn have the ability to be searched on that platform. That's literally how that platform works. If you use a WEB BROWSER, you can search for the same exact information (user's job title / employer) using the exact search information (real name or email address). This is just Zoom doing this automatically.
But yes, this is all Zoom's fault... not LinkedIn (aka Microsoft)
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
This one seems kinda like bullshit to me. Zoom isn't "data mining" in this case, Zoom is simply showing PUBLICLY AVAILABLE LinkedIn information
I think this case highlights that people don't like unexpected dataflows. They get some video-conferencing software and they expect it to video-conference, not to also connect to other data-sources. They get a flashlight and expect it to show light, not to also send information about their location and contacts. They ask Siri a question and expect an answer, not also for their audio to be stored in a database. They get a vacuum cleaner and expect it to clean floors, not to also upload floormaps of their house for someone else's resale. They get a text-editor and don't also expect it to read their emails. http://www.catb.org/jargon/htm... [catb.org]
(By the way, data-mining has nothing to do with "publicly available" or not. It refers solely to the practice of reading from a large database for information.)
Maybe it's time for a law which says if a consumer product has unexpected dataflows then it's open to civil liabilities and class-action lawsuits. The statute needn't define what "expected" means - that can be left to case-law and the courts on a product-by-product basis, since it's already the courts' bread-and-butter to decide intent and expectation.
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At what point should "unexpected dataflows" become expected? It seems like a never-ending drumbeat of "if you put info into a service, it gets sold and spread around" regardless of the company involved. So why is it still reasonable for people to assume that free software doesn't try to make money somehow?
Good question. I think it's easy for tech-savvy people, or ones who follow tech news (like us), to understand the data-dealing business models of free software, and to underestimate how little other people understand. I think that a court and lawyers would be well places to figure out where your point is, and enshrine it in case law.
There was an article about AAA using Zoom (Score:2)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zoom-hackers-aa-meetings-held-digitally-coronavirus-zoom-bombing-breaking-in-harassing-recovering-alcoholics/ [cbsnews.com]>br>
For groups like this, this was a method to still help people. And Zoom was what they had come up with to continue. What else is out there for groups l
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Zoom has settings to allow people to join selectively. Just because the defaults on the free version suck, doesn't mean you can't fix it. This is just user education - in most cases, you can get a Zoom subdomain and private meeting ID's with PIN numbers. If you're sharing this data publicly, then yeah, anyone with that information can join and do weird things, unless you turn off screen sharing/video sharing for participants which is an option. If you go to an AA meeting, you can have a nudist join you just
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If I become a member, can I get a discount from the drive-through liquor store?
Open Source Teleconferencing Solutions (Score:2)
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Who is hosting these open source meeting servers?
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epic identity control failure (Score:2)
From the article:
People need to know whether they have successfully controlled the release of their identity or not, and Zoom wasn't lifting a finger to help