Zoom Daily Users Surge To 300 Million Despite Privacy Woes (bloomberg.com) 55
Zoom Video has been lambasted for its security flaws, but the backlash hasn't slowed growth. The company reported a 50% surge in use of the online meeting application in the past three weeks. From a report: On April 21, more than 300 million people used Zoom's flagship videoconferencing app, up from about 200 million on April 1, Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan said Wednesday during a webinar focused on security. While some companies and school districts have dropped the app, Zoom's response has reassured investors and sent shares climbing. "Clearly the Zoom platform is providing an incredibly valuable service to our beloved users during this challenging time," Yuan said. "We are thrilled and honored to continue to earn the trust of so many enterprises, hospitals, teachers and customers throughout the world."
Zoom Is Amazing (Score:2)
Well, actually, it's more amazing how quickly and how much the social media effect has pushed Zoom into the spotlight and the forefront.
Someone should make a Facebook post about Jitsi.
Why are you paying Zoom again?
Re:Zoom Is Amazing (Score:4)
Rise of the clueless? (Score:1)
Zoom is only "amazing", if you're about as native to the Internet, as somebody who formerly printed out the Internet, and moved straight to iPads.
People who haven't seen anything yet, and believe the web to be the Internet. Who don't even WANT to have access to a file system structure. Who believe not caring about privacy is still "cool". (It never was. It always made you a loser.)
And no, that's not the "average user" anymore. The average user now actually gives a shit about privacy.
No, it's people who have
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I am surprised we have not seen "Think of the Children" as another way to STOP all users from using ZOOM and using the preferred software vendor....
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Why are you paying Zoom again?
Paying? I know a lot of people using it, I'm not sure I've seen anyone pay for it yet.
Many AA groups pay for it. (Score:2)
You have to if you have more than a few people in the meeting. We're running 100+ and got on top of the security issues fast. Like, within days we had that under control.
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I honestly wonder how performant JItsi would be if I set it up. I only have a small micro
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Humorous, paywall for a paid hit piece (Score:1)
Why would I pay money to read a news article that itself has been paid for by a targeted campaign against Zoom?
Why would I listen to anything Dropbox has to say after what they did to their desktop client?
Re: Before you blame stupid users (Score:1)
Dropbox it itself a joke.
It only exists because Windows is too stupid to mount sftp/ftps, like normal people, and for people to stupid to get a home server.
If you've got a FritzBox, you've already got a home server, by the way. Including the link sharing feature and streaming from an USB hard drive.
You can take the horse to the river. (Score:2)
But you can't make it drink if it doesn't want to. Film at 11.
Can't stop the signal (Score:3, Insightful)
The things that people have been complaining about Zoom, don't really matter to most people.
Zoom acted pretty quickly to address anything that did - like Zoombombing. One of the advantages of the, let us say "quirky" mechanism Zoom uses to distribute clients is that they can have nearly 100% client upgrades out pretty much any time.
Zoom also smartly added many features a more general consumer likes, such as auto-beatification filter you can enable (basically skin smoother), and virtual backgrounds. I was on a Teams call the other day, it didn't seem to even have virtual backgrounds...
Re: Can't stop the signal (Score:2)
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Hey we haven't had a Tesla story in a few days!
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Rei is too focused on COVID-19 "research" to bother with Tesla.
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Zoom also smartly added many features a more general consumer likes, such as auto-beatification filter you can enable (basically skin smoother), and virtual backgrounds. I was on a Teams call the other day, it didn't seem to even have virtual backgrounds...
MS Teams does have virtual backgrounds, and with a much better implementation than Zoom; it just works regardless of what the wall behind you looks like. In Zoom you typically end up with spooky faceless eyes unless you're in front of a green screen. The only issue is that adding custom backgrounds is a bit more work in Teams (you need to copy files to an obscure directory).
I can't believe that I am promoting an MS product here, as a long term Linux user who's forced to use Windows by his employer.
Sorry Cisco (Score:5, Informative)
All your anti-Zoom FUD didn't work.
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Why Cisco? Do they have a competitor? Like a completely free easy enough for a grandma to setup competitor?
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Yes they own Webex and Zoom has been eating their lunch. Corporations have been switching from Webex to Zoom in massive numbers as well. Hence the FUD.
Re:Sorry Cisco (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they own Webex and Zoom has been eating their lunch. Corporations have been switching from Webex to Zoom in massive numbers as well. Hence the FUD.
They have? If you're already using Webex why would you switch to Zoom? It isn't really an enterprise app. The growth is from grandma, churches, small businesses. And for them it's probably fine, including the security issues.
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Webex is incredibly clunky compared to anything else. Nobody needs any convincing to drop Webex.
You'd be amazing how much convincing people need to change something which appears to be working.
IT department: We want to switch from Webex to Zoom. We find it difficult to support Webex, and it's hard to keep it running on our network. We want to test the new system and roll it out to all PCs and change everything for everyone. Estimated cost: 100 man-hours, plus the new program is incredibly easy for people to learn.
Management: Webex is working fine, I can see the video okay. You want me change the icon
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They have? If you're already using Webex why would you switch to Zoom? The growth is from grandma, churches, small businesses. And for them it's probably fine, including the security issues.
Cost. I'm not sure what you are arguing about. It is happening. And, uh, "small businesses" are corporations too. You guys sure like to argue over nothing.
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They have? If you're already using Webex why would you switch to Zoom? The growth is from grandma, churches, small businesses. And for them it's probably fine, including the security issues.
Cost. I'm not sure what you are arguing about. It is happening. And, uh, "small businesses" are corporations too. You guys sure like to argue over nothing.
You guys? Who is "you guys?" Why would you even say "corporations" in the first place if you're referring to all sized business and draw a distinction between SMBs that incorporated versus partnerships, sole proprietorships, etc. I am not the one splitting hairs here. The implication of the word in in the context of IT is the same as "enterprise."
I like Zoom a lot, and use it for personal use and highly recommend it to people for personal use. It is not good for a managed enterprise, especially if you are
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I'm forced to use Webex for work, but am doing some other conferences (with family members) on Zoom. Zoom is so obviously vastly superior, doing even trivial things like *remember which camera I chose last time!!! WOW!!!* and flawlessly showing a dozen videos at larger than postage stamp size. Zoom is also obviously better than Google Teams. And Zoom has a working Linux client that seems to be identical to other platforms. All other ones I am forced to use the browser.
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Yes they own Webex and Zoom has been eating their lunch. Corporations have been switching from Webex to Zoom in massive numbers as well. Hence the FUD.
FUD? What part of the known vulnerabilities in Zoom products are you Uncertain or have Doubts about?
You don't need FUD at this point to convince people that Zoom is a product that has security issues right now. You only need to convince people that they should give a shit about security. And I see the ignorant masses have provided about 300 million reasons as to why they don't.
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An article like this is pretty useless without an updated recap of what the security issues in the current software. I only hear, "everybody knows only dummies use zoom" but there are millions of users and where are the awful consequences?
Google is your friend. So is the CVE database.
(I'm not even going to provide links, because that would imply you're too stupid to use a search engine. If you're hanging around this forum, I hope you aren't, because most despise "IT professionals" who need hand holding all the damn time.)
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Yes they own Webex and Zoom has been eating their lunch. Corporations have been switching from Webex to Zoom in massive numbers as well. Hence the FUD.
Err no. That doesn't make any sense, and anyone who has switched should fire their IT department for wasting time and money.
Re: Sorry Cisco (Score:2)
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Funny, I thought that it was Microsoft and Citrix that were paying for all of the anti-Zoom FUD.
And THIS is why the west has security issues (Score:1)
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Sometimes "security" doesn't matter. Sometimes it is important and sometimes it isn't. If someone wants to listen in on my work calls, go ahead. Maybe it will help them sleep at night.
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The problems aren't related to some people listening in. The lack of security here also allows introduction of malware and remote control of a computer.
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Hasn't happened, but you are convinced, so why bother arguing. You win.
Re: And THIS is why the west has security issues (Score:1)
Suuure. So clearly whenever mommy moves her hands in front of her face, she stops existing to you. --.--
Because if openly careless and clueless you hasn't noticed malware whose whole job is to be hard to detect even by professionals, then clearly it can't exist! You're the expert, after all! Prof. Dr. Clueless van Noteven-Cares.
If there is one thing I wish for on this rotten planet, it is that people too stupid to tell they're stupid are left to actually face natural selection. Wherever you're from would be
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And yet, this was exactly what was reported in the article.
Re:And THIS is why the west has security issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Ppl are STUPID, plain and simple.
The only thing truly stupid is taking a concept like security and then applying it broadly on assumptions that it affects all people equally. It doesn't. Security is a mitigation to a risk, and people's risk profile are different depending on the action they take.
Your government using Zoom for military meetings? - High risk.
You chatting to your grandma? Who gives a shit.
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You chatting to your grandma? Who gives a shit.
Conversation of Gandma with caring grand kid
Oh grandma, I am sorry to hear that you are having issues with the bank. Here, what is your bank ID and password. I will go take care of it.
Yeah, who gives a shit? China THANX YOU for helping them.
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Why China? You sound kinda racist.
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The only thing racists in this was you.
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Yeah, who gives a shit? China THANX YOU for helping them.
Yep, that's right. China has hacked and are real-time recording and parsing the 300 million calls with speech recognition looking for bank account numbers. /sarcasm.
Let me help you understand risk. I was naive to think that people understood the word. Risk itself has two components, the severity of the consequence, and the likelihood of it occurring. Your contrived example has such an incredibly low likelihood that despite you invoking the "think of poor grandma's bank balance" (incidentally a bank balance
In their defence (Score:1)
The Risk Differs per User (Score:4)
Risk is multi-faceted and while most people don't really break it down so discretely, they get the idea.
Severity: The range of potential damage. Consider 1% loss to 100% loss. (from "Someone learned that our *a* Zoom call existed" all the way to "Someone recorded the entire Zoom call".
Probability: The chances that any damage will occur. ("Ok, so there's a risk that someone will snoop on our Zoom call, but with so many calls occurring, what are the chances that MY call will be snooped?")
Loss Value: So you have a severity of 100% (chance of someone learning everything about your chat) and the probability that it will happen is 20%... but what's the value of the loss? What if what's being snooped on is a discussion of cat collar sizing? Not a big deal, right?
So, for MOST people using Zoom, their risk profile looks like this:
Severity: Unknown
Probability: Unknown, but "low"
Loss Value: Low
Thus... they'll continue to use.
Good enough for UK Parliament (Score:2)
Re: Good enough for UK Parliament (Score:1)
I thought I lacked the words to reply. But then I remembered ... https://youtu.be/5hfYJsQAhl0 [youtu.be]
"despite privacy woes" (Score:1)
Yes, the same idiots that are used by Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram, Google, and the lot.
Don't worry, the seed is planted. Privacy is very popular around here (Germany), and we got the GDPR. It will take time to reach every last shithole. I mean there are still hunter gatherer tribes on this planet. That haven't heard of the wheel either.
Stupid people.... (Score:1)
Why all the haters? (Score:2)
Is it really a Cisco campaign? As an individual user and relatively tech-savvy guy, Zoom works fine for me both for an online class and occasional family chats. I realize they have some catchup to do, but they seem to be forging ahead with it. Their app is not only easy to navigate but has lots of options for optimizing video, audio, etc.
Security? Bombs away, nobody bugs me (yet). I got no corporate secrets, don't do any transactions, nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Way way more risk from GoogBook than
Privacy? What privacy? (Score:2)
So Zoom sells your data to marketers. Who doesn't?