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Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

blog.zoom.us

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Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#31

Post by shostack »

anonu wrote: post #25

I noticed today that the mic was "muted" on zoom. I chimed in on the video call I was on and the window flashed a reminder that I was "muted". So clearly the mic itself is not muted - the software is still listening. Not sure how I felt about that given all the recent Zoom privacy revelations.

I feel like this is a common video chat feature. Given that the option to mute while in the chat is likely done most frequently through their UI vs the system settings, this seems to be an appropriate use of monitoring input to ensure the user is able to avoid common problems.

There seem to be some legitimate concerns about privacy worth discussing further but I'm not sure this is one of them.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#32

Post by pyt »

I contacted LG last month regarding their use of the Facebook SDK's automatic event collection in their ThinQ Android app. They responded and told me that they're disabling it in an upcoming release (incidentally, today's). If a single email is all it took to get a company with over $50 billion in revenue to disable Facebook's tracking in one of their apps, I really don't think that these companies are sharing data intentionally.

What justification does Facebook have for keeping automatic event collection turned on by default in their SDKs? Why can't they enable it only when the the user has explicitly opted in (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-events/gdpr-complia...)? They even say, "you need to ensure that your SDK implementation meets these [GDPR] consent requirements."

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#33

Post by holografix »

anonu wrote: post #25

I noticed today that the mic was "muted" on zoom. I chimed in on the video call I was on and the window flashed a reminder that I was "muted". So clearly the mic itself is not muted - the software is still listening. Not sure how I felt about that given all the recent Zoom privacy revelations.

Your mic is never “muted”. It’s just not actively capturing audio. If you want to mute it for real, unplug it.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#34

Post by banana_giraffe »

klyrs wrote: post #30
anonu wrote: post #25

I noticed today that the mic was "muted" on zoom. I chimed in on the video call I was on and the window flashed a reminder that I was "muted". So clearly the mic itself is not muted - the software is still listening. Not sure how I felt about that given all the recent Zoom privacy revelations.

Yeah, my light's still on when I'm not sharing video and I hate it

Interesting. The LED on my 2019 MBP's camera goes off when I stop Zoom's video.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#35

Post by holografix »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #20

If Zoom "takes its users' privacy extremely seriously" and their "customers’ privacy is incredibly important" then why would they be releasing software without a strong knowledge of what third party code they're adding in, and what exfiltration might be happening as a result? They hold user privacy in such high regard and yet are releasing a program without even hooking it up to a network monitor for five minutes? So…

I for one don’t think Zoom is being malicious here. I imagine plenty of other apps out there are doing the same right now, by naïvely making use of FBook’s SDK.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#36

Post by neotek »

ricardobeat wrote: post #21
proactivesvcs wrote: post #20

If Zoom "takes its users' privacy extremely seriously" and their "customers’ privacy is incredibly important" then why would they be releasing software without a strong knowledge of what third party code they're adding in, and what exfiltration might be happening as a result? They hold user privacy in such high regard and yet are releasing a program without even hooking it up to a network monitor for five minutes? So…

This is absolutely common. Business will require tracking/authentication/etc, contracts will be signed, developers will implement the provided SDK. Nobody will inspect the data being sent. > releasing a program without even hooking it up to a network monitor for five minutes How many times have you seen anyone do that? Unfortunately that is the reality - my personal take is to simply try to avoid vendor libraries at…

>This is absolutely common. Business will require tracking/authentication/etc, contracts will be signed, developers will implement the provided SDK. Nobody will inspect the data being sent.

That's exactly the point. Zoom says they care deeply about privacy, but their actions demonstrate they don't. Doesn't matter how common it is, or the reasons why it happened, it's proof positive that their statement is untruthful.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#37

Post by rpdillon »

klyrs wrote: post #30
anonu wrote: post #25

I noticed today that the mic was "muted" on zoom. I chimed in on the video call I was on and the window flashed a reminder that I was "muted". So clearly the mic itself is not muted - the software is still listening. Not sure how I felt about that given all the recent Zoom privacy revelations.

Yeah, my light's still on when I'm not sharing video and I hate it

This is about audio, which, afaik, doesn't by itself trigger the light on Macs.

Re: Zoom’s Use of Facebook’s SDK in iOS Client

#38

Post by banana_giraffe »

dx87 wrote: post #27

It's good that they removed it, but it's also dissapointing that they had no idea that it was happening until someone made a blog post about it. Do their employees not vet any of the code they use, and just slap things together off the internet and hope it's not doing anything their users don't like?

Between this and the HTTP server, it feels like Zoom of old that wrote the app was more willing to make the user experience vs user privacy trade off in favor of user experience.

Now you need to log in via Facebook with a separate browser window, and thanks to the HTTP change, you need to click on a browser dialog to launch a meeting from a link. So, they've either changed their policy to err more towards the privacy side and haven't found all the cases yet, or, more likely, still have the same attitude except when the tech world starts screaming at them.

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