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SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

reuters.com

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Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#31

Post by dang »

droithomme wrote: post #17

I'm not Zooming, but everyone I know is, and it looks pretty damn slick and seems to work great. I can't think of any service that has had as fast and huge an adoption, which is obviously due to blind luck/things beyond their control (no one saw global apocalypse coming and hoping for such would be a horrible business plan). Of course there's been other services working just as well or better for at least 10 years no…

Zoom is the deluge du jour (literally—today has been the day of Zoom deluge complaints), but Occam called and wanted to let us know that we don't need any sinister explanations. It's obviously (or at least, explicable) as an effect of the covid crisis.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22754135

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22751116

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#32

Post by shrewduser »

macrael wrote: post #25
hunter2_ wrote: post #4

The fact that they show end users (no pun intended) an "end-to-end encrypted" badge on the meeting window itself, and elsewhere explain how a Zoom server (not Zoom client) is what constitutes an "end" despite the whole rest of the electronic communication industry using "end-to-end" to refer exclusively to user agents, is bonkers.

they appear to have already changed this to "your client connection is encrypted"

which means fuck all.

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#33

Post by paxys »

RandallBrown wrote: post #8
scotth wrote: post #2

I looked into adding Zoom to our Slack workspace this morning, and was beside myself with the set of permissions they requested — reading the contents of every channel and private chat they're included in? For a slash command? That's a hard no. Turned me off the service entirely.

It's only available in the paid version, but slack's video conferencing works pretty well.

It works great for 1:1 and small group conversations, but its max meeting size (15 people I think) is an immediate disqualifier. We regularly have hundreds of people on Zoom calls with no issues.

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#34

Post by damanamathos »

yumraj wrote: post #23
deminature wrote: post #7

This is a knee-jerk reaction. Zoom was indirectly sending information to Facebook as part of their Facebook SDK integration to enable login, not directly as part of explicit information gathering. Any app that integrates with the Facebook SDK does this, and they've also patched it already [1]. The supposed root exploit found in Zoom also requires physical, logged-in access to the machine, at which point a Zoom exploi…

> This is a knee-jerk reaction. Large part of, if not entire, Zoom engineering is based in China, so just based on that singular fact IMHO this is not at all a knee-jerk reaction. Add to that numerous security found in Zoom just over the last few days, and I'm surprised why more companies are not doing the same.

Webex also has a large engineering team in China too.

The senior people are all in the US though.

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#36

Post by bootloop »

Robotbeat wrote: post #22
gonesilent wrote: post #18

Spacex is a targeted environment. It's smart for them to not use such a service. Many years back it was getting hardware shipments intercepted and bugged. A company was spun out of just dealing with the amount of attempts to root Elons devices.

Which company?

Many claims. Not enough sources.

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#37

Post by 013a »

deminature wrote: post #7

This is a knee-jerk reaction. Zoom was indirectly sending information to Facebook as part of their Facebook SDK integration to enable login, not directly as part of explicit information gathering. Any app that integrates with the Facebook SDK does this, and they've also patched it already [1]. The supposed root exploit found in Zoom also requires physical, logged-in access to the machine, at which point a Zoom exploi…

Decisions like this have less to do with "what are you doing now" and "what was your intention", and more to do with "is there a pattern" which is an externally surfaced signal that something deeper is going on with their engineering organization, long term business plans etc.

Zoom has a pattern of abusing users' trust. Ok, maybe its not intentional, but increasingly, that doesn't matter in security discussions. The fact that it was unintentional is a concern itself. Maybe they lack discipline, or leadership, or something; I'm not asserting to know. But, its no longer good enough to simply say "we're sorry, it was an accident".

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#38

Post by black_puppydog »

shrewduser wrote: post #32
macrael wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they appear to have already changed this to "your client connection is encrypted"

which means fuck all.

well that means it's cryptographically superior to the ICQ client I used beginning of the century.

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#39

Post by [deleted] »

aidos wrote: post #26
RandallBrown wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only available in the paid version, but slack's video conferencing works pretty well.

It works, but it burns through so much CPU your computer will be a gibbering mess. There's some pretty silly inefficiencies going on, for example; if you switch away to another window, they display a small video player while keeping the big one running the background. Each time you switch into screen sharing mode, they drag you back to the app again. If you draw on the screen, someone has screwed up their linear alge…

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns

#40

Post by kerng »

deminature wrote: post #7

This is a knee-jerk reaction. Zoom was indirectly sending information to Facebook as part of their Facebook SDK integration to enable login, not directly as part of explicit information gathering. Any app that integrates with the Facebook SDK does this, and they've also patched it already [1]. The supposed root exploit found in Zoom also requires physical, logged-in access to the machine, at which point a Zoom exploi…

Companies that are under ITAR take security indeed seriously- this is not your average ad-selling business.
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