Background Description:
Since the Coronavirus pandemic, Zoom video conferencing service has seen a huge increase in downloads and is now being used by millions for work and e-learning.
Impact:
- Anyone with your meeting link can join your meeting, so avoid sharing the link on social media unless you want it to be a public event.
- Avoid using your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to host public events, as it would allow anyone to connect with you even when the event is over.
- Paid subscribers can record the meeting including its text transcription and any active chats and save it to the cloud where it can be accessed by other users.
- Zoom sends user analytics data to Facebook, even if you don’t have a Facebook account
Recommendation:
Before you host a Zoom meeting:
- Allow only signed-in users to join.
- Generate a random Meeting ID and require a password to join. Send the password to participants privately.
- Set the screen sharing to “Host only” so that random people can’t share unwanted content.
- Disable "Join before host" so that participants can’t join without the host.
- Enable the "co-host" feature if you need another user to help you manage participants during the meeting.
- For public events, enable the “Waiting Room” feature.
- Use the latest version of Zoom.
During a meeting, the host can:
- Lock the meeting so that no new participants can join
- Remove unwanted participants
- Mute or turn off video for inappropriate participants
- Put a participant on hold
Other useful controls:
- Turn off in-meeting file transfer
- Turn off annotation feature
- Disable private chat