Zoom Video Communications announced it has seen a 20-fold increase in daily users on its messaging and conferencing platform. In March, the company passed 200 million daily meeting participants, both free and paid, compared to 10 million in December last year. The increased usage has raised concerns about security and privacy on Zoom, and CEO Eric Yuan issued an apology to customers, saying the company would focus more on addressing the concerns.
The CEO noted that Zoom had been built largely for enterprise users, whereas it's the increased consumer usage in recent weeks that has exposed some of its weaknesses. Yuan said the company was taking the concerns "extremely seriously" and was halting all other updates in order to focus on resolving the security issues. In addition to a full review of security, in cooperation with third-party experts and users, the company will start weekly webinars to discuss security and privacy issues with users and start issuing transparency reports on how it handles user data.
Yuan's statement follows a report in the New York Times that the state of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, sent the company a letter asking what, if any, new security measures the company has put in place to handle the increased traffic on its network. The AG said that the company had been slow to address security flaws, such as so-called 'zoombombing', when internet trolls exploit a Zoom screen-sharing feature to enter video conferences uninvited.
Zoom’s cloud-meetings app is currently the most popular free app for iPhones in the US, according to Sensor Tower, a mobile app market research firm. Zoom's average mobile user numbers in March were nearly three times that of its nearest rival Microsoft Teams, according to research firm Apptopia.
Zoom earlier this week issued an update to its privacy policy, amid concerns it was sharing user data with social media like Facebook. The company said it only collects the technical data needed to provide the service, and only its website zoom.us uses third-party tracking cookies, which users can disable on their browser. It's also removed a Facebook SDK in its iOS app to stop sharing unnecessary data with the social network. No user data from the messaging and video conferencing platform itself is ever shared with external parties.
The company said it also has special protections in place for schools using the platform, in order to protect young people's privacy. Zoom has relaxed its time restrictions in several countries for schools during the coronavirus outbreak, leading to over 90,000 schools in 20 countries adopting the platform.
