The Curious Case of Zoom

So, in today’s article we will find out about the Zoom Video Conference application. You might have already known about the Zoom app and its exciting news. So, you might be thinking about what’s unique about this article. Well, there are some interesting facts about the app.

Many think that Zoom is a Chinese app; No, because the app is from the U.S., and the man who owns it is Chinese-American (citizen of U.S.) naming Eric Yuan, who is also one of the world’s richest person.

Now, let me take you through some stats that, how the outbreak had helped Zoom. Zoom’s customer base has surged from 10 million users to 200 million, including over 90,000 schools across 20 countries. The U.K. government has been using Zoom for remote Cabinet meetings. Even the Indian Government and Military had been using this app before banning it.

Zoom is a public listed company in the stock exchange of the U.S. Its shares were up by 40% due to its growth and trust among the investors before the allegations. After the allegations, there was a huge dip in the customer base as well as in the stock price. Its share price went up from $80 to $160 and then fall to $110 (while writing this article).

Let us see what was the problem, the main problem with the Zoom was that anyone could have joined anyone’s meeting without the password, even though the company updated their application with a password to join. Still, there are a lot of reports regarding hacking and all. For instance, when my professor was taking a class through Zoom, unknown people joined the conference and tried to steal the data from his P.C., also there were reports like obscene images popped up during the online zoom session by top badminton coaches.

There might be a few reasons why did this happen, right? Interestingly, Zoom has many servers in the world including China (exciting right, there’s always something fishy when we hear the word China!). Researchers at Toronto’s Citizen Lab found Zoom used encrypt encryption keys issued via servers in China, which raised worries. Let me make this simple for you, “it is POSSIBLE certain meetings were allowed to connect to systems in China, where they should not have been able to connect” and “the calls were routed MISTAKENLY after the company ramped up capacity to cope with a huge increase in demand” from the CEO of Zoom, and we all know that China does not enforce strict data privacy laws, after all, DATA IS THE NEW OIL.

The latest news says that the Zoom app’s login details are available in the Dark Web at throwaway prices. Even a few companies have filed a lawsuit against Zoom due to these reasons.

So, this caused a great concern for everyone including countries like the U.S., India, and many companies across the globe had to ban it because data privacy plays a very important role at present and in the future. What if a company’s future projects were stolen? What if a country’s military information was stolen? This could put everyone in danger. So, always keep your data safe and use trusted applications only.

Thank you for reading and hope to see you in my next one.