As the world is adapting to changes due to COVID – 19, for both work and personal needs, so are various industries. Some are experiencing unprecedented losses while others are seeing spikes never before dreamed of. One such industry experiencing said increase usage is video conferencing. As broadband and cellular bandwidth have expanded so too has the number of platforms for these type of services. Webinar, Video and Web, conferencing company Zoom has recently come under fire for its alleged use of private user data.
Business Insider has reported on a class action suit that was just filed on Monday. The person that filed the suit alleges that Zoom has failed to properly safeguards personal information. In particular it was revealed last week that their iOS version is sending out analytics data. A company known both analytic data sharing, and data leaks, Facebook, could be the recipient.
From the filed document,
” 2. Zoom, however, has failed to properly safeguard the personal information of the increasing millions of users of its software application (“Zoom App”) and video conferencing platform. Upon installing or upon each opening of the Zoom App, Zoom collects the personal information of its users and discloses, without adequate notice or authorization, this personal information to third parties, including Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”), invading the privacy of millions of users.”
This type data access happens due to that many apps who integrate Facebook’s SDK. Their SDK is used in order to allow users to use features such as logging in with their Facebook account. A statement from their blog was posted on March 27th in response to the report about the iOS app.
“We originally implemented the “Login with Facebook” feature using the Facebook SDK for iOS (Software Development Kit) in order to provide our users with another convenient way to access our platform. However, we were made aware on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, that the Facebook SDK was collecting device information unnecessary for us to provide our services. The information collected by the Facebook SDK did not include information and activities related to meetings such as attendees, names, notes, etc., but rather included information about devices such as the mobile OS type and version, the device time zone, device OS, device model and carrier, screen size, processor cores, and disk space. “
It goes on to explain changes implemented in addressing this issue. They have removed the Facebook SDK in the iOS client. Even though it is removed users will still be able to login to their FB account thru their browser.