Zoom – a malware threat?

As more and more educators spend their time communicating using Zoom video, reports are surfacing warning of the vulnerabilities in Zoom (e.g., story from the Guardian). Zoom has been the “go to” service for the online courses I have taught in the last couple of years and the product our family now uses for group gatherings. I don’t think in all of these hours of use I have experienced the “Zoom bombing” problem. I can see this issue as resulting in inappropriate experiences in K12 settings. I guess I would probably not be aware of the other security issues that seem possible.

ArsTechnica offers a nice post on security suggestions for educators and their students that is worth a read. I admit I have not been using some of these suggestions (e.g., using a password for the meeting), but other suggestions were applied as a function of my normal instructional practice (e.g., the link for the Zoom meeting was sent to students using the Announcement feature in Blackboard before each meeting).

Exploring the settings that improve security can be a bit difficult to locate. Here is how I find them and I think the process may be different now for those using Zoom as a registered education service. See if this works for you. I am working from a computer and find the preference settings at the traditional location after launching a program. Use “more settings” to locate the settings described in the ArsTechnica article.

Under “General” locate more settings.

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