The story has gone viral now and until they put better default security in place we can expect to see more Zoom bombs and thus more schools and other free users to have more bad experiences and complain publicly about it. I assume paid users are better educated on how to use the software to make their Zoom meetings secure or is there something about the free version that is inherently less secure?
Teachers all across the country were asked to put together lessons in a short time using technologies they were not familiar with, often with little to no training. My former district had planned to close to students for one day in March to offer in-service training in using resources for online teaching, but the Governor closed all public schools before that date so teachers were left scrambling.
Many teachers are also parents having to home school or monitor their kids while also teaching classes. Under a great deal of stress, more than a few used Zoom without knowing much about it, including how to change default settings or manage settings to prevent Zoombombing.
Add in bored kids at home with free time and enough technical expertise and you get Zoom bomb stories and some bad experiences.
Those should be corrected easily enough and shouldn’t affect the company’s prospects significantly.
An earlier thread linked an article that suggested how to improve the default security.
The data sharing is a bigger issue. The company seems to be working to address it. Their response in the near future will be important. A good response will make people quickly forget the negative stories.
On the plus side, numerous people who had not even heard of Zoom a few months ago have heard of it now.
All the best,
Raymond