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Zoom monitors activity on your computer

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Re: Zoom monitors activity on your computer

#132

When someone sends you a zoom invite, cancel the download, then click the having problems link to download again. Cancel it again. It will show you a link to join by browser. A few other meeting apps have dark patterns like this. One of my favorite things about Hangouts Meet is it's web first.

Whereby (https://whereby.com/) is also web-first and works really, really well. Simple, no fuss, people don't have to install anything to join your meeting. Highly recommended.

Re: Zoom monitors activity on your computer

#133
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reasonable for Zoom or any app to know whether its window has focus. That doesn't imply spying on anything else you're doing.

I think the issue is not that Zoom knows if its application window has focus, but that it reports focus state to anyone other than the user. For example: 1. Zoom knows it’s not focused on Bob’s machine, and notifies Bob that someone has begun sharing their screen. 2. Zoom knows it’s not focused on Bob’s machine and notifies Sally of this. Scenario 1 seems acceptable and helpful. Scenario 2 is invasive and unnecessary…

It can be helpful for certain scenarios. And others don't have to enable it. For companies, at least in the enterprise plan you can also disable it company-wide (according to reports by others). So companies can simply opt out for everyone.

Re: Zoom monitors activity on your computer

#134
post #132

When someone sends you a zoom invite, cancel the download, then click the having problems link to download again. Cancel it again. It will show you a link to join by browser. A few other meeting apps have dark patterns like this. One of my favorite things about Hangouts Meet is it's web first.

Whereby ( https://whereby.com/ ) is also web-first and works really, really well. Simple, no fuss, people don't have to install anything to join your meeting. Highly recommended.

> We in Whereby are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our users. Our business model is to provide a paid service to users who need additional features on top of the FREE version, and does not rely on widespread collection of general user data. [0]

Interesting. Thank you!!

[0] https://whereby.com/information/tos/privacy-policy/

Re: Zoom monitors activity on your computer

#135
post #132

When someone sends you a zoom invite, cancel the download, then click the having problems link to download again. Cancel it again. It will show you a link to join by browser. A few other meeting apps have dark patterns like this. One of my favorite things about Hangouts Meet is it's web first.

Whereby ( https://whereby.com/ ) is also web-first and works really, really well. Simple, no fuss, people don't have to install anything to join your meeting. Highly recommended.

I use whereby as well, I highly recommend it.

Re: Zoom monitors activity on your computer

#136

When someone sends you a zoom invite, cancel the download, then click the having problems link to download again. Cancel it again. It will show you a link to join by browser. A few other meeting apps have dark patterns like this. One of my favorite things about Hangouts Meet is it's web first.

there is now a browser extension which does this automatically https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22659216

there is a setting in the meeting creator's account to have the link right away

Re: Zoom monitors activity on your computer

#137
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how PII is defined nor how privacy policies work. They list potential PII received in standard categories with normal product usage and backend processing. Otherwise every server on the internet can be sent data by you at anytime which effectively makes listing things pointless.

Definition is wrong then. That's the point.

No it's not. As I explained, it's well developed legal structure that's used by several countries for major legislation and has decades of precedence. There's also further complexity on how data is submitted, stored, and processed.

Any random file is not considered PII. It doesn't automatically identify you and it's still your responsibility if you send your private files everywhere.

Re: Zoom monitors activity on your computer

#139

Super timely. Even on my linux box I noticed yesterday that zoom, even though I had "closed" the application, was still running `ps -ef | grep zoom` so I killed it. After reading this, I've deleted it too. Super weird.

True, I used zoom about a month ago and it's still running a process in the background.

Um, why haven't you killed it?
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