Zoombombing is about to cost the popular video conferencing company a large amount of money.
According to a report by Techcrunch, Zoom agreed on Monday to settle a lawsuit against the company for violating users’ privacy. The cost of that settlement for Zoom: $85 million.
At the heart of the lawsuit, which was filed in March 2020, is Zoombombing, which is when uninvited users would gain entry into a Zoom meeting and, often, try to interrupt it.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, use of the video conferencing service suddenly exploded. Zoom basically went from being a mostly business-to-business application to becoming a customer-oriented household name overnight.
However, problems quickly rose due to this sudden burst in popularity. Exploits that previously went unnoticed were being weaponized by nefarious actors. Malicious users were quickly finding how easy it was to gain access into any Zoom meeting by just finding or figuring out the private URL for a session.
Business calls were interrupted by trolls, online classrooms were spammed with pornography. The privacy situation became such a big problem that Zoom suspended development of new features and solely focused on fixing security issues.
Along with Zoombombing, the lawsuit also mentions security issues related to the service’s sharing of personal data with third party companies. Zoom was found to be secretly sharing data with platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook last year.
The settlement still requires approval from a U.S. District judge. If approved, Zoom customers may receive a partial refund of 15 percent of their subscription or $25. Other users can also receive up to $15.
In addition to the monetary settlement, Zoom has also agreed to improve security on their platform and let meeting hosts know when an attendee is using third-party apps.
Zoom previously settled a complaint from the FTC late last year over its privacy and security issues. However, the FTC settlement did not require that Zoom compensate its customers or even pay a monetary fine at all.
