How Secure is your Video Conferencing?

April 2, 2020

Derek Read

‍As the UK and other countries grapple with the realities of life under lockdown, video conferencing apps have become pretty essential. But how secure are they?!

There are plenty of different apps vying for users but Zoom has emerged as one of the most-used. But after revelations it was sending background user data to Facebook, it now seems that Zoom’s encryption isn’t exactly what it said it was. According to a report from The Intercept, Zoom’s video meetings are not end-to-end (E2E) encrypted as the company states on its website. ‘Currently, it is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meetings,’ a spokesperson told the site.

Instead, the company has TLS encryption in place. This is essentially what browsers use to secure HTTPS websites and it means that data is encrypted between users and Zoom’s servers. But that’s different from ‘end-to-end’ encryption which protects all content shared between users from the company providing the service. ‘When we use the phrase ‘End to End’ in our other literature, it is in reference to the connection being encrypted from Zoom end point to Zoom end point,’ the company told The Intercept. ‘Content is not decrypted as it transfers across the Zoom cloud.’

Further adding to the confusion is that the company says the in-meeting chat does support E2E as Zoom doesn’t have the key to unlock those messages. If it makes you feel any better, Zoom says it only collects data about meetings to help it improve its service. Things like IP addresses, OS details and which device you use. It also says it doesn’t let employees access the contents of meetings or sell any user data of any kind on to third parties.

Extracts from article on the Metro. Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/01/zoom-meetings-arent-end-end-encrypted-12490588
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