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

Talking not as a security researcher but as someone who has to work with large corporate IT departments none of the alternatives proposed in this thread will fly.

With corporate IT, it's either MS Teams because it's installed "by default" on enterprise workstations and managed at the O365 level, or Zoom or Cisco WebEx, all managed centrally by IT.

In our experience with these services, Zoom has been more reliable, and the quality of service for video and audio has been generally better than the rest, specially Teams. At the end of the day, this is all that our enterprise users care about.

When running calls across organisations, it invariably ends up as a zoom meeting since Teams is flaky for someone, or WebEx doesn't allow someone to share their desktop.

Another significant but underrated factor is the non-tech and non-enterprise market. Friends and family in their seventies and eighties default to zoom for their weekly or monthly catch-up sessions and get-togethers because "it just works". My neighbour who's in her late seventies is an editor for a small news magazine for the community, and zoom is her choice to collaborate with others on their articles.

People don't want to bother with security until there's a massive breach somewhere, or it affects their business, or it's mandated by legislation or certification requirements.

If an app which supports groups video calls counts as a "video conferencing platform" in your book, then you're better off using either Facetime or Signal, both of which support E2EE, unlike Telegram.

Are you using an old version? Skype was good once but has gotten buggier and more bloated with each new release.

> Second, the few times I’ve used Zoom it’s been absolutely garbage, with video and sound dropping or just not there (this was a university paying for Zoom’s services).

Yeah that absolutely sounds like bizzaro world. Zoom somehow works a lot better than anything else, IME. (I wish it didn't, there are many things I don't like about it)

Re: join via web, in my experience if you reject the download a few times it'll pop up the link. Clearly a dark pattern attempting to force you to install their insecure and frankly kind of crappy software, but apparently one they're aware of problems with. They just don't care.

I used Zoom yesterday after months and I had to download the client. I was in hurry because a customer sent me a link so I didn't investigate much. They usually make calls on Slack which works well and already has all of their conversations.

WebEx used to be a nightmare with a Java client. Maybe it's better now but I didn't use it for years on a computer. I had an Android tablet with the WebEx app and I used that. Luckily no customer of mine is using WebEx anymore.

I never used Chime and never heard about it until now.

Skype doesn't have URLs AFAIK. I used it with a small group of friends during lockdowns because it was the intersection of what all of them had. We rejoined the same call every time. It works well once started. Cumbersome to start.

Meet has the least friction: create a call, send a URL, click/tap to join. I don't remember if a Google account is required but everybody has one in this part of the world because of Android. It works well.

Teams has a mandatory download AFAIK, I got a customer that uses it. It works well once started. I have no idea if I can start a call without an Office 365 account. I remember that it asks me to login to that customer's Office.

FaceTime, never used because it's an Apple only thing. I don't have the hardware.

Duo, I think it improved since its launch but despite being in the phones everybody uses here, everybody makes call with WhatsApp. I think Google lost the network effect battle.

WhatsApp is the easiest to start a call with but no URLs, no calls on the desktop. The quality is not very good, maybe because people can have poor connections on their phones (mobile data or crowded WiFi channels.)

Telegram added group calls recently but I never used them. Network effects again and at least 10 times less market penetration. One to one calls where on par with WhatsApp.