Zoom, after raising to immense popularity among work-from-home workers due to COVID-19 lockdown, has now upgraded its security with end-to-end encryption chats. This feature was announced first in May but was limited to paid members only. And after receiving criticism for that bias, it’s now rolling out this security measure to all users starting next month.
Zoom was made up of business users, as defined by the video conference maker. But the sudden lockdowns across the world led many corporates and educational institutions to on-board their workforce and students to Zoom (and alike apps) to continue their routines.
While this pressured was fairly handled by Zoom, it failed to provide them with a secure platform for conferences. Initially, it was subjected to many security concerns like leakage of private information, zoo bombing, etc.
Zoom End-to-end Encryption For All
And now, it finally addressed this issue by introducing the end-to-end encryption feature. While this step is plausible, it shocked the community saying it’s only for paid customers! And the reason it detailed is even intriguing. The reason it quoted for not extending end-to-end encryption for free users is to help the FBI in tackling exploitations. While this raged the community, it has now revised the decision and called out for everyone.
Zoom announced it will be extending the end-to-end encryption feature for all users, starting as an early beta in July 2020. And as before, these conversations will be encrypted with AES 256 GCM transport protocol, which is one of the strongest encryption standards being used today. It says the account administrators have the right to enable/disable this feature for account and group.
Users who are interested in using this feature should enable it by going through a one-time process like giving more details, which includes verifying the phone number with an OTP. This is to avoid mass creation of fake accounts to abuse, says Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom.
Source: Zoom
