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It's incredibly straightforward to prevent zoombombing, you simply set a password on your room. I would be surprised if Zoom hadn't made this the default by Mon

It's incredibly straightforward to prevent zoombombing, you simply set a password on your room. I would be surprised if Zoom hadn't made this the default by Monday. Prior to the age of 'zoombombing', frictionless entry to every meeting was a nice feature, and meeting IDs are difficult enough to guess (11 digit number) that entry of uninvited guests basically never happened. Now that everyone has so much spare time, the worst elements of society are using it to try to harass children. I guess the tragedy of the commons kicks into full swing and we must have passwords going forward.

bilbo0s 7y ago
Fine, but what's the number of times that a naked man zoombombs your class before you tell your school and they switch to Teams? These are schools we're talking about. That number is exactly one. Because I can guarantee you the kids are gonna tell their parents what they saw, and the parents are gonna light into the principal. Slow video? A few random disconnects? These are the kinds of issues that result in second chances. Random men showing up naked in your classfull of kids, or random racists coming in your class to call the black kid an n-word? Yeah, I'm fair certain that results in a, "Thanks, but no thanks. We'll find something else."
- deminature 7y ago
  Fair argument, I just think it's rather 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater', getting rid of a tool that teachers are familiar with, works well and can handle 200MM customers because of an easily changed setting, which is already present in the software. I know your argument is the correct one, but it's frustrating to see Zoom caught up in a furore of media-driven controversy.
  - tatersolid 7y ago
    > works well and can handle 200MM customers That’s the the point though: Zoom doesn’t “work well” if you include basic security as a required part of “working.” Zoom using ECB mode for encryption, and transmitting keys to China says everything. They just don’t care about security at all. Everyone in the banking industry I work with has blocked or banned Zoom for longer than COVID-19 has been around. Microsoft Teams seems to be the new Default choice, if only because everyone is using office365 already and anything is better than WebEx.
    - fock 7y ago
      I also think, it doesn't work well for conferencing... Last/First time we used it, the annotation tool just stopped updating, colleague was drawing and I was: "I don't see anything" (and then everyone: yeah me too). Also I'm wondering, why it send the "foreign" screen in fusll res (WQHD), but at a measly 4 fps with crappy compression... After this my personal impression is that it is just an obtrusive piece od adware, which happens to behave like a rootkit in some parts...
    - valuearb 7y ago
      Yea, super concerned about China watching my kids math call. Yawn.
      - tatersolid 7y ago
        “Everyone in the banking industry has blocked Zoom” was my qualifier. The U.K. even held a cabinet meeting over Zoom. There’s a lot more than schoolwork taking place on Zoom unfortunately.
- parasubvert 7y ago
  I’m on Zoom a gajillion times over 5 years and I’ve not once experienced a zoombomb. I have experienced Google Hangouts bombs. The incidence is of course going way up, but it really is overblown on the quantity. The biggest issue are those that post links on twitter or some place public (same issue for Hangouts).
  - godelski 7y ago
    And let's also be clear that the incidence rate is going up because 1) the popularity of Zoom and 2) because there's a lot of people home going stir crazy. Saying Zoom has a bombing issue feels like saying Linux doesn't get viruses.
- valuearb 7y ago
  How often do zoom bombs occur. Once every million calls?
lukevp 7y ago
I believe zoom defaulted to passwords in the past, and a lot of companies just updated their settings to turn it off. Not sure what the state is now since we switched to Teams.
viraptor 7y ago
> It's incredibly straightforward to prevent zoombombing, you simply set a password on your room The password is the same for everyone. Are you seriously saying that kids won't share the link/password online themselves as pranks? This reduces the risk from "anyone can join" to "anyone with password can join". The waiting rooms helped at least, but the passwords reduce, not stop, zoombombing.
- deminature 7y ago
  Isn't that a problem with any video conferencing service then, if the credentials to enter are shared by participants?
  - viraptor 7y ago
    Google meet used with gsuite will by default prevent anyone from outside the company domain to join the meeting (unless explicitly invited) for example. I've joined some webinars where the password was per-user, (so you can kick/ban that one user) but can't remember the service. But yes, that was my point - shared passwords don't prevent conference-bombing on any service.
    - closeparen 7y ago
      So will Zoom, on a corporate account.
mrandish 7y ago
> I would be surprised if Zoom hadn't made this the default by Monday. Zoom already announced that the password option will be set by default starting tomorrow.

bilbo0s 7y ago

Fine, but what's the number of times that a naked man zoombombs your class before you tell your school and they switch to Teams? These are schools we're talking about. That number is exactly one. Because I can guarantee you the kids are gonna tell their parents what they saw, and the parents are gonna light into the principal. Slow video? A few random disconnects? These are the kinds of issues that result in second chances. Random men showing up naked in your classfull of kids, or random racists coming in your class to call the black kid an n-word? Yeah, I'm fair certain that results in a, "Thanks, but no thanks. We'll find something else."

deminature 7y ago
Fair argument, I just think it's rather 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater', getting rid of a tool that teachers are familiar with, works well and can handle 200MM customers because of an easily changed setting, which is already present in the software. I know your argument is the correct one, but it's frustrating to see Zoom caught up in a furore of media-driven controversy.
- tatersolid 7y ago
  > works well and can handle 200MM customers That’s the the point though: Zoom doesn’t “work well” if you include basic security as a required part of “working.” Zoom using ECB mode for encryption, and transmitting keys to China says everything. They just don’t care about security at all. Everyone in the banking industry I work with has blocked or banned Zoom for longer than COVID-19 has been around. Microsoft Teams seems to be the new Default choice, if only because everyone is using office365 already and anything is better than WebEx.
  - fock 7y ago
    I also think, it doesn't work well for conferencing... Last/First time we used it, the annotation tool just stopped updating, colleague was drawing and I was: "I don't see anything" (and then everyone: yeah me too). Also I'm wondering, why it send the "foreign" screen in fusll res (WQHD), but at a measly 4 fps with crappy compression... After this my personal impression is that it is just an obtrusive piece od adware, which happens to behave like a rootkit in some parts...
  - valuearb 7y ago
    Yea, super concerned about China watching my kids math call. Yawn.
    - tatersolid 7y ago
      “Everyone in the banking industry has blocked Zoom” was my qualifier. The U.K. even held a cabinet meeting over Zoom. There’s a lot more than schoolwork taking place on Zoom unfortunately.
parasubvert 7y ago
I’m on Zoom a gajillion times over 5 years and I’ve not once experienced a zoombomb. I have experienced Google Hangouts bombs. The incidence is of course going way up, but it really is overblown on the quantity. The biggest issue are those that post links on twitter or some place public (same issue for Hangouts).
- godelski 7y ago
  And let's also be clear that the incidence rate is going up because 1) the popularity of Zoom and 2) because there's a lot of people home going stir crazy. Saying Zoom has a bombing issue feels like saying Linux doesn't get viruses.
valuearb 7y ago
How often do zoom bombs occur. Once every million calls?

lukevp 7y ago

I believe zoom defaulted to passwords in the past, and a lot of companies just updated their settings to turn it off. Not sure what the state is now since we switched to Teams.

viraptor 7y ago

> It's incredibly straightforward to prevent zoombombing, you simply set a password on your room The password is the same for everyone. Are you seriously saying that kids won't share the link/password online themselves as pranks? This reduces the risk from "anyone can join" to "anyone with password can join". The waiting rooms helped at least, but the passwords reduce, not stop, zoombombing.

deminature 7y ago
Isn't that a problem with any video conferencing service then, if the credentials to enter are shared by participants?
- viraptor 7y ago
  Google meet used with gsuite will by default prevent anyone from outside the company domain to join the meeting (unless explicitly invited) for example. I've joined some webinars where the password was per-user, (so you can kick/ban that one user) but can't remember the service. But yes, that was my point - shared passwords don't prevent conference-bombing on any service.
  - closeparen 7y ago
    So will Zoom, on a corporate account.

mrandish 7y ago

> I would be surprised if Zoom hadn't made this the default by Monday. Zoom already announced that the password option will be set by default starting tomorrow.