Zoom conferencing is one of the few companies that’s benefitting from Coronavirus breakout. This pandemic led everyone to restrict to their homes, thus rely on video conferencing apps like Zoom to communicate and work out things. While this made double its value, it’s also being sued for illegally sharing users’ personal data with third-party apps like Facebook. A user from California just filed a lawsuit against Zoom seeking aid for punitive damages.
Analysis and Confirmation
Surfaced by Motherboard, Zoom was found to have a code that’s would allow the platform to share users’ personal data to Facebook and potentially other third party services. This was even witnessed by its Privacy Policy, as the service may do so. Motherboard confirmed this after analyzing the Zoom iOS app’s traffic flow. This showed the app sending data about the user’s phone model, carrier, timezone, and city along with a unique advertiser identifier.
The lawsuit alleged Zoom for illegally sharing data to other parties without the users’ knowledge. Further, it didn’t even ensure the deletion of data from Facebook even after being found. Users were being traced right after they’re opening their app or installs.
Zoom’s Reply!
The company did respond to Motherboard’s analysis report and confirmed the sharing of data! This led Zoom to push an immediate update to all iOS users that had the code snippet removed. After this, it stopped responding to other journalists’ emails asking for a comment on the case filed.
Californian state laws regarding privacy strictly restrict this practice. Thus, it led a Californian named Robert Cullen to file a lawsuit in the federal court of San Jose seeking punitive damages. Zoom’s stock prices have more than doubled since this breakout, and allegations of such could bring it back to where it started.
Via: Vice Motherboard