Friday, March 27, 2020

Zoom Advertising and Privacy Concerns

As large swathes of the United States is forced to conduct business, education and social interactions through videoconferencing technologies like Zoom, some brands have cleverly discovered ways that they can redeploy their advertising dollars. For example, Behr Paint and West Elm has created some work from home backgrounds. Chipotle is hosting "Chioptle Together" sessions on Zoom to bring people together. Other companies have shifted ad dollars to helping local communities.

But we should be aware of Zoom's privacy policy - Zoom reserves the right to store users' personal data, including recordings of video calls, instant messages and files, and the Zoom iOS app sends personal data to Facebook. This is deeply troubling, especially for very personal video conversations, or sensitive business communications. While it isn't clear if Zoom is actually doing any of these things with user data, the fact that its policy allows for such collection and use in itself is a cause for concern and while we are all using Zoom and other video conferencing technologies, we should bear in mind the technology's security/privacy levels.

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