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Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

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Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#181

Post by Enjaami »

ghaff wrote: post #41
blululu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who runs Zoom via the browser (they do deploy a dark pattern to discourage this behavior but there is no good reason to trust them) I find that Hangouts and Teams are both solid alternatives in terms of AV quality. Would be happy to see some actual data on this claim. People prefer the interface they are used to. I personally find Zoom to be really frustrating from an interface angle but that is probably j…

I don't really get the religion around the video platforms. I use three (Zoom, Google Meet, and Bluejeans) on a regular basis and they all seem simultaneously decent enough and imperfect on my network on a given day. Teams is fine too but I rarely use it.

So much fiery passion about these random tools, haha

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#182

Post by acatton »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #170
saddlerustle wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like all apps that are "just" WebRTC, jitsi doesn't work well on networks with persistently high packet loss. A VC app needs to work reliably 99.99% of the time, not just 99% of the time.

Agreed. I suggested Jitsi to a few university professors early in the pandemic last year. They used it for a good 6 months, with classes of about 20 people, 2-3 times a week. The experience of not having to login and fuss with accounts was great. However, when everyone had their cameras on + screen sharing, audio quality typically suffered. These professors since moved on to use Zoom and it’s way more stable. I don’t…

Galène[1], which is FLOSS, was specifically developed by the University of Paris for the purpose you're describing.

The UI is terrible, I'll admit that, but the performance and scalability is better than Zoom.

[1] https://galene.org/

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#183

Post by lrvick »

ramimac wrote: post #153
lrvick wrote: post #118

I recommend almost anything else at all other than Zoom. As a security researcher that has reported a number of issues to Zoom, I can say without reservation they are one of the most security negligent companies I ever worked with. It was evident after multiple calls with their team they didn't employ anyone strong technically in their US offices and had no idea how to translate security issues, even obvious ones lik…

Disclaimer: Have worked with many smart folks who now work at Zoom. I agree that Zoom has had numerous security and privacy failings. I think it is important to color the characterization of their security teams with a timeline however. Looking at that gist - the majority of the content predates the conclusion of the "90 day security plan" [1]. The team, and product no doubt, has changed immensely in the past year. T…

It is easy to say "we are better now, we promise". They straight up lied about security features like e2e for years, and leadership is still mostly the same. They only started seriously hiring in security because they got caught over and over and over.

I have worked with companies with some of the best security people in the world who had no cooperation from engineering to roll out basic risk reductions like code review because it might mean slowing down velocity a bit. To be blunt, security people as often hired with big pairs of golden handcuffs in order to make security marketing more believable, regardless of the reality.

The only way to win back trust of the security minded at this point, is to do what strong competitors like BigBlueButton and Jitsi did: Open source, and invite anyone from the public to audit code and compile binaries as they like.

There is virtually 0 chance they ever do this, but if they did, I would gladly audit it for free out of public interest, and have no problem doing a 180 and actively recommending zoom if it becomes easy to verify it is as good or better than the competition at security and privacy.

For now I maintain my position of strongly urging all my clients to abandon Zoom in favor of historically honest and highly accountable alternatives that work just as well as Zoom without constantly pestering users to grant Zoom with blind sweeping remote code execution privileges on their systems.

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#184

Post by kijiki »

scrollaway wrote: post #48
lisper wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must be a very dark pattern. I didn't even know it was possible to run Zoom in a browser, and even now that I know I can't figure out how to do it. What's the secret?

You need to click download zoom on the meeting launch and give it a second, it will show a “having trouble?” message and let you open in a browser.

I haven't tried it lately, but last time I tried it around a year ago, if you try to use the web client and the moderator hasn't shown up yet, you have to solve a Google ReCaptcha every couple of minutes while you're waiting, or it kicks you out.

I usually try to go with the charitable interpretation, but when the dark patterns start to stack up that high...

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#187

Post by bashinator »

nwienert wrote: post #168
cycomanic wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the point is not that zoom was better UX wise, but simply had better marketing, or not?

Both. Honestly - there's huge, massive room for better UX that would really revolutionize online communication: - Presence indicator/avatar in your toolbar of close contacts or team - Push-to-talk to send audio to anyone from toolbar with non-disruptive indicator - Instant screen/mouse share from there with audio and floating video optional - Just so many fluidity improvements if you do a more minimal video window th…

"Hey Bot, find out from Alice when I need to have those slides finished. Kind of urgent."

It immediately sends an email and a slack message. An hour later, it asks if you want to send an SMS or call to Alice.

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#188

Post by cpncrunch »

foresto wrote: post #176
cpncrunch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are many self-hosted options out there. https://github.com/meetecho/janus-gateway works well for multi-party video with up to about 15 users in a room assuming everyone has a reasonably reliable connection.

Janus caught my attention when I was looking at WebRTC servers (SFUs) last year, but I couldn't find any good FOSS web apps for it. Do any exist?

It is a complete video conferencing package by itself, so you generally don't need anything else. It just works out of the box to give you multi-party video conferencing across multiple rooms.

We use it in our (closed source) online tutoring / whiteboard software, and it is pretty easy to integrate, by taking their videoroom sample code.

What is it you're looking for?

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#189

Post by dathinab »

sombremesa wrote: post #120
lrvick wrote: post #118

I recommend almost anything else at all other than Zoom. As a security researcher that has reported a number of issues to Zoom, I can say without reservation they are one of the most security negligent companies I ever worked with. It was evident after multiple calls with their team they didn't employ anyone strong technically in their US offices and had no idea how to translate security issues, even obvious ones lik…

Zoom has fixed the UX in this business, which is the one thing that matters most™, and which is why they will continue to be successful. It's like a restaurant which has the absolute best food by a mile, so they remain in business despite the cockroaches and unfriendly waitstaff. Most customers don't really care about privacy and security, they just want to pretend, and as long as they can easily pretend they're happ…

Except they don't have the best food, they have the illusion of it.

When I had to do interviews recently I had to use a wide variety of Video Conference Software, and Zoom was the only one which had some arbitrary user unfix-able not configuration related problems.

Ok, slack also sucks bad if any part has a problematic internet connection, but I only ran into it after I had a new job ;=)

But yes, the UX is better compared to e.g. MS Teams, but MS Teams works way more reliable (for Video Conferences, assuming it's only used for that and no "fancy" business access control features are enabled).

Re: Stop using Zoom, Hamburg’s data protection agency warns state government

#190

Post by markshepard »

sombremesa wrote: post #120
lrvick wrote: post #118

I recommend almost anything else at all other than Zoom. As a security researcher that has reported a number of issues to Zoom, I can say without reservation they are one of the most security negligent companies I ever worked with. It was evident after multiple calls with their team they didn't employ anyone strong technically in their US offices and had no idea how to translate security issues, even obvious ones lik…

Zoom has fixed the UX in this business, which is the one thing that matters most™, and which is why they will continue to be successful. It's like a restaurant which has the absolute best food by a mile, so they remain in business despite the cockroaches and unfriendly waitstaff. Most customers don't really care about privacy and security, they just want to pretend, and as long as they can easily pretend they're happ…

Honestly airsend (https://www.airsend.io) works better than Zoom . Airsend can join meetings without creating accounts (God send for interviewing job candiy). With all the Zoom dark ui patterns galore, UX is confusing for new users. Zoom forces desktop app and quality has come down also. Now Teams and Meet are even better than Zoom.
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