One of Zoom’s controversies is how it routes some of its network traffic through China’s servers. If you’re privacy conscious, you can opt out of specific data center regions starting April 18. But this is only for paying customers.
This feature gives our customers more control over their data and their interaction with our global network when using Zoom’s industry-leading video communication services.
I can’t say I agree. It’s not about making privacy a paid feature, it’s that Zoom is exploiting its own insecurity to create a paid feature. Next step: Making end-to-end encryption a paid feature, and leaving free users to fend for themselves.
Check It Out: Zoom: Don’t Want to Get Routed Through Chinese Servers? Fork Over Your Cash
I’m NOT defending Zoom, and would rather use *anything* else whenever possible, ever since Apple had to remove Zoom’s web server last year. But I did notice the following on the linked web page:
“Data of free users outside of China will never be routed through China.”
and
“On April 3, we removed all of our HTTPS tunneling servers in China to prevent any inadvertent connection through China.”
With all due respect, were these points perhaps missed before this article was posted? While I, too, am against making encryption a paid feature, this would seem to be something less than “leaving free users to fend for themselves” …unless it is I who am misreading something?
You’re correct, wj45. They do say that users in the US will not be routed through China. They also provide additional information about geofencing and what data mightn’t go to China. For those of us who work in Asia, and have to conduct remote meetings in the region, this is still a sobering piece of information, as it’s not entirely clear which countries will route through which countries servers, especially on multi-continental meetings. This is of particular interest if one is working on sensitive, proprietary projects where there is intense global competition.
Not to suggest that any country would stoop to industrial espionage, but just a precaution.
Note to self; Do not arrange next team meeting on Zoom.
Andrew:
Zoom is an evolving platform. They have migrated from incompetence to clusterflop to full-on opportunistic slime.
Or, to paraphrase Mark Twain, ‘There are three kinds of platform launch foul ups: FUBAR, TARFU and Zoom’.
I suppose that one could argue that this is simply a variant of the ‘in-app purchase’ paradigm, but that would be generous to the point of profligate. This is a naked attempt to spin gold from bollocks.
To wit, I just saw that Charlotte just posted something today regarding Zoom account credentials being sold on the dark web.
It would be a genuine public service for TMO to do a review of video conferencing/group chat apps, their strengths and weaknesses (eg end to end encryption, free vs paid, limits on numbers of participants, etc) and their track records for security and reliability (how well do users say they work), to the extent known.
And yes, that is a request.
There are alternatives to Zoom
Even when Zoom tries to do good, they do it in an evil way.