Zoom may be leaking your email address: What to do now

(Epitome credit: Zoom)

Zoom, the increasingly popular video-call service, seems to exist leaking data like a colander draining pasta. A new report says the email addresses and photos of Zoom users are up for the taking, which would permit random strangers start video calls with anyone they please.

This news comes from Vice, which points to problems with a default Zoom setting that in many cases places everyone who uses the same electronic mail domain into a "company directory" and makes them all visible to each other.

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While many new Zoomers will probable not know nearly this setting — Zoom was primarily an enterprise tool before COVID-19 inverse life as we know information technology — knowing almost this one setting is the difference between getting your contact info and photos shared with strangers.

How to disable Zoom's Company Directory setting

To notice the Company Directory setting to disable this feature, Zoom users with paid accounts should open https://zoom.us/account/im/setting. It's not available to gratis users.

Zoom tries to prevent problems with this characteristic by exempting the big webmail providers, as you can see in the fine impress of Zoom's Managing Contacts help section:

Past default, your Zoom contacts directory contains internal users in the same system, who are either on the aforementioned account or who'due south [sic] email accost uses the aforementioned domain as yours (except for publicly used domains including gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc) in the Company Directory section.

You lot can also utilise this Zoom folio to submit your e-mail domain for exemption.

Why Zoom is leaking data

This bully user-sorting idea runs into problem when it encounters webmail domains that are not widely known. Vice talked to Barend Gehrels, a Zoom user who saw this issue flare upwards with the Dutch Internet service provider domains xs4all.nl, dds.nl, and quicknet.nl.

Even though free users don't have admission to Zoom'due south Visitor Directory setting, it's seemingly nonetheless affecting them.

That's according to twitter user @JJVLebon, who "registered with [a] private email." and and then "got grand names, electronic mail addresses and fifty-fifty pictures of people in the company Directory." The user used the hashtag #GDPR to highlight the inherent privacy threat.

Hopefully, nosotros will run across Zoom change how this works, and soon. It'south become the app that housebound people are using to communicate with others. Heck, I even used Zoom to take a yoga form online. And while y'all could write this off equally a niche problem, information technology's something that you should have to opt into, non hurriedly opt out of.

Another Zoom no-no

Oh, and one more thing: don't share screenshots with your Zoom Meeting ID online. British Prime number Government minister Boris Johnson learned this lesson the hard way when he tweeted out the photo below simply didn't crop out the 9-digit ID number used for Her Majesty's Chiffonier meetings:

This forenoon I chaired the showtime e'er digital Cabinet. Our message to the public is: stay at domicile, protect the NHS, save lives. #StayHomeSaveLives picture show.twitter.com/pgeRc3FHIpMarch 31, 2020

Henry is a senior editor at Tom's Guide covering streaming media, laptops and all things Apple, reviewing devices and services for the past six-plus years. Prior to joining Tom's Guide, he reviewed software and hardware for TechRadar Pro, and interviewed artists for Patek Philippe International Magazine. He'due south also covered the wild world of professional wrestling for Cageside Seats, interviewing athletes and other manufacture veterans.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/zoom-may-be-leaking-your-email-address-what-to-do-now

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Zoom may be leaking your email address: What to do now