Zoom Adds New Security Enhancements to Help Prevent Disruptions, Trolls in Virtual Meetings

Zoom now lets participants report a disruptive user in a virtual meeting.

By Jagmeet Singh | Updated: 17 November 2020 12:19 IST

Zoom Adds New Security Enhancements to Help Prevent Disruptions, Trolls in Virtual Meetings

Zoom is uplifting its security to better deal with Zoombombing

Highlights

Zoom allows hosts and co-hosts to temporarily pause virtual meetings
By default, Zoom has enabled this ability for both free and paid users
Zoom is bringing a tool to alert about vulnerable meetings

Zoom has added new security features to help prevent disruptions during virtual meetings and allow users to remove and report disruptive participants. The video conferencing app is also bringing a tool called At-Risk Meeting Notifier that helps alert hosts about the meetings that are at high risk of being disrupted and getting trolled by some individuals. Zoom meetings are still quite popular as people continue to work from home due to the pandemic. However, online disruptors and trolls are actively impacting virtual conversations and causing what is commonly known as Zoombombing.

One of the latest security enhancements implemented by Zoom is the ability to let hosts and co-hosts temporarily pause their meeting and remove a disruptive participant. All you need to do is click on the Security icon and then select Suspend Participant Activities. This will stop all video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotation, screen sharing, and recording. It will also end Breakout Rooms.

Zoom will also ask the host or co-host if they want to report a user from their meeting and share their details. This will remove the reported user from the ongoing meeting and will notify Zoom's Trust and Safety team.

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“Hosts and co-hosts may resume their meeting by individually re-enabling the features they'd like to use. Zoom will also send them an email after the meeting to gather more information,” the company said in a blog post.

Zoom has by default enabled the Suspend Participant Activities feature for both free and paid users.

In addition to the new enhancement, Zoom now allows meeting participants to report a disruptive user by clicking the top-left Security badge. This is in line with how hosts and co-hosts have the ability to report disruptive users and trolls from the Security icon. Moreover, account owners and admins can enable reporting capabilities for non-hosts.

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Zoom has enabled both the Suspend Participant Activities feature as well as the ability for meeting participants to report a disruptive user on its desktop clients for macOS, PC, Linux, and mobile apps. The features will also reach its Web client and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) later this year.

Zoom has also brought its At-Risk Meeting Notifier that scans public social media posts and other websites to look for publicly shared Zoom Meeting links. It automatically alerts the account owner by email on detecting a meeting that appears to be at high risk of being disrupted. Meeting hosts will also receive advice on steps that could include deleting the vulnerable meeting and creating a new one with a fresh meeting ID, enabling enhanced security settings, and using solutions like Zoom Video Webinars or OnZoom.

Zoom already has over 300 million users, with a large number of people using it as their daily communication tool. This makes it necessary for the platform to help eradicate Zoombombing and allow users to safely communicate with their peers.

Apart from limiting trolls, Zoom is also busy uplifting security by rolling out end-to-end encryption and working with regulators on addressing user privacy concerns.

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