What is ‘Zoom bombing’ and how can you prevent it?

A new, not-so-great trend.

Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world.

While we’re all stuck at home during social distancing and isolation during the coronavirus pandemic, hopefully you’ve discovered the joys of having conversations — or playing online games — with loved ones, family and friends on video conferencing services like Zoom and Google Hangouts.

But there’s a trend that’s become a problem for Zoom users called “Zoom bombing.” If you’ve heard about it and are looking for ways to prevent it, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s a breakdown and explanation of the trend:

What is Zoom?

It’s a leading video conference service that allows many users to chat with each other at once.

What is Zoom bombing?

It turns out a complete stranger can actually come into your meeting or chat and wreck havoc.

Oh, like photobombing?

Well, it’s a lot worse than that.

… What do you mean by that?

Those strangers are sometimes sharing pornographic images, or using threatening or hate language. Imagine if your young kids were on, say, a school meeting and suddenly it was interrupted that way.

Yikes.

Yep. It’s gotten so bad that, as Newsweek reported, “the FBI has warned the public of the potential for ‘Zoom-bombing,’ after two schools saw their online classes get hijacked on the popular video conferencing app Zoom.

So how do you prevent this from happening?

I’ve seen a number of suggestions I’ll throw in here. The first is from The Verge, which gives you this instruction:

 If you schedule a meeting from the web interface, you won’t see the option to disable screen sharing. Instead:

  • Click on “Settings” in the left-hand menu
  • Scroll down to “Screen sharing” and under “Who can share?” click “Host Only”
  • Click on “Save”

From a mobile device, you can tap the “MORE (…)” button in the bottom right corner and turn off sharing in “Meeting settings.”

Business Insider suggested to go to “account management > account setting,” find the “waiting room” button and turn it on. That way, the host can allow in participants who are invited and weed out uninvited guests who will sit in the queue.

And then there’s a quote from a Zoom spokesperson given to Forbes:

“For those hosting private meetings, password protections are on by default and we recommend that users keep those protections on to prevent uninvited users from joining. We also encourage users to report any incidents of this kind directly so we can take appropriate action.”

[vertical-gallery id=906233]

[jwplayer uAAgRnfb-q2aasYxh]