Zoom: Video chat app responds to privacy concerns as popularity surges amid coronavirus lockdown
Company promises not to monitor conversations or sell data
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Your support makes all the difference.Zoom has promised not to monitor conversations or sell users' data amid concerns over its privacy.
The video chat app has surged in popularity in recent weeks, as workplaces, schools, families, friends and more use it to meet up without leaving the house and breaking coronavirus lockdowns.
At the same time, it has faced a flurry of questions over its privacy policy. Issues including a bug that allowed users to be spied on through their webcam and the discovery that the app was sending information to Facebook have led to concerns the company could be failing to protect the personal data of users.
It has now posted new updates to its privacy policy that it said were aimed at "address[ing] recent concerns about Zoom’s privacy policy".
In the introduction to the new updates, chief legal officer Aparna Bawa said the company was aiming to emphasise a number of its key policies. They included the fact that it does not sell user data and does not intend to, will not "monitor your meetings or its contents" and that it complies with privacy laws and regulations where it operates.
The updates were not changes to its practices, it said. Instead, the new updates were intended to make the privacy policy "more clear, explicit, and transparent".
The new updates specifically address worries among some users that the conversations conducted through its chat app could be stored. Zoom says that unless a host chooses to record a meeting, any video will not be stored, and that if a call is being recorded then everyone in the chat will be informed and have the option to leave.
It also claimed that the only data it is able to collect is required to provide the Zoom service, such as basic information including what device a user is on. It committed not to gather any unnecessary data, and said also that it would not mine that data or sell it to anyone.
Zoom also said that while it might monitor user data on its website – so that it could show ads to people if they visited the website and left without joining, for instance – it would not collect information about people's activity on the platform for similar ads. "No data regarding user activity on the Zoom platform – including video, audio, and chat content – is ever provided to third parties for advertising purposes," Zoom said in the update.
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