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This headline is SOOO garbage - seriously - what is up with HN and Zoom these days. Just trash headlines. Edit: In case it is removed this was the original hea

This headline is SOOO garbage - seriously - what is up with HN and Zoom these days. Just trash headlines. Edit: In case it is removed this was the original headline "Zoom private chat text between attendees is actually public" From the zoom docs. "If you save the chat locally to your computer, it will save any chats that you can see-- those sent directly to you and those sent to everyone in the meeting or webinar. If you save the chat to the cloud, it will only save chats that were sent to everyone and messages sent while you were cloud recording." This is TOTALLY different than all private chat text is public. 100% false. Private chat text is available to the folks who were participants in the private chat. That would be a much more accurate headline. Now if the recipient of a chat first downloads it to their computer (zoom auto-scrubs if you upload to cloud) and THEN uploads it to the cloud - then whoever has access to it can see it. But this takes a number of steps. Download your chat and then publish your chat publicly. The headline is completely wrong.

gojomo 7y ago
The headline isn't fully accurate, but if people are confused about – and burned by – this behavior, it is a documentation & design issue in Zoom. They need clearer warnings this will happen, or a design which clearly separates the two info-streams, of differing sensitivity, into separate download steps & filenames.
- thoraway1010 7y ago
  The headline is inaccurate. In a lot of businesses this really is not an issue. Many businesses don't want a lot of bob mockery in private chat. Webinars people want these questions to go over with a supervisor (common question analysis etc). Hosts can set appropriate controls (public chat only / host only etc). I hope zoom continues to cater to people trying to get work done - which they seem to be, and not this hyper paranoid, totally misleading title crowd. The solution on hacker news seems to always be to add lots of new steps, warnings, device authentications, encryption keys, block the host from doing this or that etc. I'm already tired to the endless cookie acceptance popups on the public web.
  - viklove 7y ago
    Ah yes, the "totally misleading title crowd," a well known group of people that everyone can easily identify. > In a lot of businesses this really is not an issue. I don't think anyone cares about the business in this situation. Individual privacy and freedoms are more important than shareholder value and micromanager snooping. When you force everyone to engage with their coworkers online, you need to find a way to preserve basic human rights -- like two individuals having a private conversation. Tech that obfuscates that, or exposes the contents of private conversations, should be called out for doing so. Yes, we want business discussions to be open. But at the same time you have to remember that it's humans that conduct the business (as little as VCs may like that, because they're so hard to control and pacify), and that those humans have human needs and emotions, and will have private conversations wherever conversations can be had.
    - thoraway1010 7y ago
      The use case zoom is targeting is not encrypted private conversations that focuses on user privacy. It is conferencing -> generally public / group meetings. The permissions are VERY loose by default - anyone can join your personal meeting room if you don't put a password based on a simple set of digits after a URL. People can join with NO account, no login. My own experience trying to do a lot more lockdown - people don't like it, they WANT this free and open approach. If you want private conversations - lots of apps out there support that. But many apps targeting business have a corporate / compliance / discovery API option. For example, slack is very popular, and admins can get corporate export turned on or discovery API which allows exports of your PRIVATE direct messaging conversations by the company. So if you think zoom letting a user see their OWN messages is bad, slack (often a popular programmer system) let's admins get everything you ever typed. The one I hate the most are the SSL middleware boxes and decrypt everything.
  - gojomo 7y ago
    HN commenters didn't require cookie warnings: the EU & California governments did. Somewhat ironic for someone taking so much care to maintain an anonymous 'thoraway' account to give so little weight to other users' desire for robust privacy, that doesn't collapse via confusing docs/interfaces & transient accidents.

gojomo 7y ago

The headline isn't fully accurate, but if people are confused about – and burned by – this behavior, it is a documentation & design issue in Zoom. They need clearer warnings this will happen, or a design which clearly separates the two info-streams, of differing sensitivity, into separate download steps & filenames.

thoraway1010 7y ago
The headline is inaccurate. In a lot of businesses this really is not an issue. Many businesses don't want a lot of bob mockery in private chat. Webinars people want these questions to go over with a supervisor (common question analysis etc). Hosts can set appropriate controls (public chat only / host only etc). I hope zoom continues to cater to people trying to get work done - which they seem to be, and not this hyper paranoid, totally misleading title crowd. The solution on hacker news seems to always be to add lots of new steps, warnings, device authentications, encryption keys, block the host from doing this or that etc. I'm already tired to the endless cookie acceptance popups on the public web.
- viklove 7y ago
  Ah yes, the "totally misleading title crowd," a well known group of people that everyone can easily identify. > In a lot of businesses this really is not an issue. I don't think anyone cares about the business in this situation. Individual privacy and freedoms are more important than shareholder value and micromanager snooping. When you force everyone to engage with their coworkers online, you need to find a way to preserve basic human rights -- like two individuals having a private conversation. Tech that obfuscates that, or exposes the contents of private conversations, should be called out for doing so. Yes, we want business discussions to be open. But at the same time you have to remember that it's humans that conduct the business (as little as VCs may like that, because they're so hard to control and pacify), and that those humans have human needs and emotions, and will have private conversations wherever conversations can be had.
  - thoraway1010 7y ago
    The use case zoom is targeting is not encrypted private conversations that focuses on user privacy. It is conferencing -> generally public / group meetings. The permissions are VERY loose by default - anyone can join your personal meeting room if you don't put a password based on a simple set of digits after a URL. People can join with NO account, no login. My own experience trying to do a lot more lockdown - people don't like it, they WANT this free and open approach. If you want private conversations - lots of apps out there support that. But many apps targeting business have a corporate / compliance / discovery API option. For example, slack is very popular, and admins can get corporate export turned on or discovery API which allows exports of your PRIVATE direct messaging conversations by the company. So if you think zoom letting a user see their OWN messages is bad, slack (often a popular programmer system) let's admins get everything you ever typed. The one I hate the most are the SSL middleware boxes and decrypt everything.
- gojomo 7y ago
  HN commenters didn't require cookie warnings: the EU & California governments did. Somewhat ironic for someone taking so much care to maintain an anonymous 'thoraway' account to give so little weight to other users' desire for robust privacy, that doesn't collapse via confusing docs/interfaces & transient accidents.