Eric Yuan

---

Zoom has use the app a lot, to stay In Touch With Friends , family and work colleagues

"Zoom", the video-conferencing app, which has seen, imposed a huge increase in downloads since quarantines have been around The World , is now by the million, for work and social gatherings.

This Week , Prime Minister Boris Johnson a picture of yourself in the chair at a Cabinet meeting on the app.

This led to questions of how safe it was to meet for the government.

"Zoom" has angry its safety record, saying defended, it would answer all the questions the government had.

What was The Row about?

First, a tweet from the Prime Minister :

It was closely followed by reports that the Ministry of defense (BMVg), the suspension of the use of the app, something that is denied it strictly.

The MoD told The Bbc that the Zoom was still never meet a high level of safety, but continue to be, a tool for cross-government chats.

Later, a Cabinet spokesman moved to clarify the attitude of the Federal government: "In the current unprecedented circumstances, The Need for effective channels of communication is crucial. National Cyber Security Centre manual shows, there is no safety reason for Zoom is not to be used for the discussions below a certain classification. "

But the Zoom was clearly not upset about the proposals, it was quite safe.

"Zoom-user takes security very seriously," she told The Bbc .

"Worldwide, More Than 2,000 facilities; ranging from The World 's largest Financial Services company of the leading telecommunications providers, government agencies, universities, health care and tele-medicine practices have done exhaustive safety reviews of our users, network and data Center layers confidently select Zoom for full implementation. "

"We Are in close communication with the Ministry of defence and The National Cyber Security Centre, and concentrate on providing the documentation you need," it said in a statement to The Bbc .

Exactly what this documentation is, neither of the Zoom, The National Cyber Security Centre nor the MoD were able to say.

So is it safe? A screen is full of Our Friends or colleagues becoming the new norm for those in self-isolation

"Zoom" has security vulnerabilities in The Past , including a security vulnerability allows an attacker to remove a participant from a meeting, spoof messages from users and hijack shared screens. Others saw a Mac user forced calls without your knowledge.

All of these were patched, but some experts still think that the company has a rather morose attitude to safety.

"Zoom" has a chequered history, security-wise, with A Number of instances where you had to question whether it really gets when It Comes to user privacy and security," said cyber-consultant Graham Cluley .

"right now, many People are using Zoom for the First Time and can not prevent au fait with the safest settings to that unwanted People out of your chat.

"you probably read the terms and conditions, but just clicked" Yes " To Everything in order to go online. Zoom and other video-messaging apps provide a valuable service now, but People should Be Careful in their decisions, how they connect to rush online. "

Prof Alan Woodward , a Computer Scientist at the University of Surrey believes that the government needs to Be Careful : "In a certain way for a public broadcast, it doesn't matter if someone can listen, as was the case for the No 10 briefing. "

"But, where I briefings have taken part in the government, where it is for the participants, the ears, we only have Microsoft team. "

"There is no evidence that the Zoom has no problems in his latest versions, but in these Crazy Times , it just seems to make sense to use systems that are tried and tested. It does reinforce The Message that, whatever you're using, you should use the latest version," he added.

Where did the Zoom come?

Zoom can only become a well-known name, since The World has been to the house, but in fact, its popularity is growing for several years. When it was debuted on the stock exchange Last Year , it is already worth $15bn (£12bn) and has now risen to $38. 5 billion

Before the Zoom Eric Yuan helped to create a video-conference software and WebEx-which was later sold to Cisco

Started in 2011 by the Chinese Software Engineer Eric Yuan , who emigrated from China to Silicon Valley at the Age Of 27, Zoom quietly, competitors such as Skype and Microsoft team, overhauled, in part because of some fairly simple functions, including adaptive backgrounds.

It is free of charge for everyone, but his base package has a 40-minute session limit for More Than three participants, something has just lifted for schools in the UK, Canada and Germany, which will enable the teachers to the use of longer sessions, as they home-school their students.

People not to rely on technology, the downloading of apps to stay in contact

More Than 50 million times has been downloaded from the Google App Store alone as a global blocking sends People in a Desperate Search for digital ways to stay In Touch with colleagues, friends and family.

there are privacy concerns?

Zoom,-stores large quantities of data to analyze their services and provide businesses with useful tools.

to share The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the privacy problems:

Despite these warnings, People in General seem to be more and more aspects of your life on the app, including some that are given away rather More Than you intended.

A widely shared video on Social Media shows A Woman in a business to forget a conference that your colleagues can see, and going to the toilet meeting in the middle, while the rest of your team confused look of embarrassment.

Other violations of etiquette are "zoom-bombing", in a word, the set surely to take its place next to the self-isolation in the post-virus dictionaries.

It is a form of trolling, Uninvited Guests , screen-sharing, pornography or other disturbing images. The Problem occurs when details of the meeting are shared publicly and The Host is not screen sharing " to "host-only".

moderators should also disable the function "file transfer" in order to prevent that malicious software, which are to be released, experts said.

self-isolation, coronavirus pandemic, video calling

Source of news: bbc.com