Over here in Singapore, Zoom is also in the eye of the storm. For the last month or two Zoom has been a daily point of reference, so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Covid-19 meme I receive on Whatsapp will involve some witty Zoom anecdote.
I spoke to soon - I’ve just received one as well as my first Zoom wedding invitation!
Ant
I am not a techie, but I just Googled “Zoom End-to-End Encryption” and received the following:
Enabling End-to-end encrypted chat
Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
Click Account Management > IM Management.
Click the IM Settings tab at the top of the page.
Navigate to the Enable end-to-end chat encryption option and verify that the setting is enabled. If the setting is disabled, click the toggle to enable it.
End-To-End Encryption for Chat – Zoom Help Center
Is this or is this not the right stuff? If you Google other competitors, some appear to have it and some require that the user enable it.
I would welcome an explanation from somebody with a background in this topic,
Harley
The problem is that Zoom’s definition of end-to-end is not the same as everyone else’s. Everyone else’s definition means that it’s encrypted from one attendee all the way to the other. Zoom’s implementation allows them to decrypt it in the middle, which is not acceptable for customers like governments.
I would imagine that this is something they would have known about in their engineering circles, but argued that technically it is encrypted all the way from one end to the other and therefore they can tick that box.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/01/zoom_spotlight/
I doubt this will cause significant or long term damage to the stock though. Telephone companies have always been able to listen into our calls and that’s not an issue for most people.
Bobby
I just received a phone call from my son in Burbank, California. He works for a very large firm employing thousands of employees.
He has been given the responsibility of Zooming a telecast taking place today involving at least a thousand people.
Makes a father proud indeed. Also makes me feel blessed to be invested in ZM (Zoom Video Telecommunications).
Jim
Re: “The problem is that Zoom’s definition of end-to-end is not the same as everyone else’s. Everyone else’s definition means that it’s encrypted from one attendee all the way to the other. Zoom’s implementation allows them to decrypt it in the middle, which is not acceptable for customers like governments.”
For companies worried about security, can they do zoom video conferencing over VPN or Zscalar’s solution and if so is this really an issue?
Take care,
Robear
Who dislikes shorts more than fleas and wishes there was an easy way to get rid of our fleas '-))
This is a serious, serious problem for Zoom. If they can fix it and not blow customer’s goodwill, they will have every opportunity to be a huge company.
If they continue to cut corners and lie about end-to-end encryption and not protect kids’ privacy and the like, they will be left by the roadside.
I am a newbie to using Zoom, but don’t they offer services like closed captioning and translation? How would one do that with an encrypted connection?
Robear
Who dislikes shorts more than fleas and wishes there was an easy way to get rid of our fleas '-))
I don’t mind public shorts - there is always two sides to every trade. What I don’t like are pump and dumps.