As reported in the Washington Post, some US school districts, including large ones like New York City and Nevada’s Clark County, have banned or disabled Zoom over security and privacy worries. Engadget reports that others, such as Washington state’s Edmonds School District and Utah’s Alpine School District, are rethinking their policies on Zoom use. And unsurprisingly, both are either switching apps or considering it, such as NYC teachers moving to Microsoft Teams.
Some of this is technical security concerns such as the lack of end-to-end encryption. Some of it is just teachers who are unfamiliar with the workflow. There have been Zoombombings–some of them disturbing.
Students also seem to be taken by surprise too. For example some have not realized that all their Zoom chats–including the seemingly private asides they make to their friends–upload to the host at the end of the session. If you wouldn’t say it publicly on Zoom, don’t say it. Text it!
Last Wednesday, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan outlined his plan to address the security issues in the next 90 days, and noted that daily meeting participants ballooned from 10 million in December to 200 million in March as the outbreak forced people to stay and work from home.
