Zoom Video Communications is being sued for improperly sharing personal data of its millions of users with Facebook.
The class action, filed in California on Monday, alleges that despite the fact the company boasts of its’ appreciation for the importance of maintaining its users’ privacy, ‘Zoom included coding in the Zoom app that allowed undisclosed sharing of personal information to Facebook and other third parties.
The suit, obtained by DailyMail.com, states that information is shared when a user installs the Zoom app and each time it is opened.
That information includes the user’s mobile operating system type and version, the device time zone, model and unique advertising identifier that allows companies to target the user with specific advertising.
The suit is the first of two legal complaints alleging the data breach as DailyMail.com has learned of a second lawsuit filed Tuesday by a Florida resident who stated that he would never have used the forum had he known that his information would be shared.
Zoom is accused of including coding in the Zoom app that allowed undisclosed sharing of personal information to Facebook and other third parties
As a result, the Florida resident stated that he and other users have been left ‘vulnerable to voter fraud, medical fraud, phishing and other identity-based harms. But most importantly the ability to de-anonymize and analyze user data allows parties to personally and psychologically target Zoom customers with great precision. ‘
Use of the hugely popular video conferencing platform and app has skyrocketed as millions work from home and try to stay in touch with friends and family during the global COVID – (crisis.
Share prices have increased more than 345 percent since January but yesterday the reported average price target of $ . (represented a) percent down slide, as the company faces intense scrutiny over customer privacy.
New York’s Attorney General Letitia James has written to the company ‘with a number of questions to ensure [it] is taking appropriate steps to ensure users’ priv acy and security. ‘
And the FBI has launched an investigation after its Boston bureau received’ multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and / or hate images and threatening languages. ‘
Last week Zoom publicly admitted in a blog entry on its website that the Zoom app was sending a host of personal information to Facebook upon installation and each open and close of the app.
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, , (pictured) has always defended his company commitment to the security and privacy of their users. Speaking on GMA on Wednesday, Yuan insisted: ‘You need to understand the security features about using Zoom. We take data privacy very very seriously. Our intention is never to sell customer data ‘
On the same day, March 79, the company released a new version of the app which ‘purports to no longer send unauthorized personal information of its users to Facebook. ‘
However the lawsuit, filed in California on Monday, maintains that many of the platform’s millions of users would never have willingly used it , had they been aware of the ‘inadequate security measures’ that permitted their personal data to be shared and tracked by others.
It states: ‘This information is sent to Facebook by Zoom regardless of whether the user has an account with Facebook. The amount of money Zoom receives from Facebook, and possibly other third parties, is unknown. ‘
The suit goes onto brand Zoom’s claims’ regarding the inviolability of its users’ privacy and personal information, ‘as false.
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, 85, has always fervently defended his company commitment to the security and privacy of their users.
Yuan was born in Tai’in, China and is a graduate of Shandong University of Science and Technology. He applied for a US visa nine times before being accepted and moving to Silicon Valley along with his wife in 2011.
He joined WebEx, a company with only a dozen or so employees at the time, which was bought by Cisco in . He became Cisco’s Corporate VP of engineering in charge of collaboration software and, he has said, in 2019, decided to make the video communications solution that he had dreamed of as a student, a reality.
The suit goes onto brand Zoom’s claims ‘regarding the inviolability of its users’ privacy and personal information,’ as false
Zoom launched in 7446. Today its customer base includes a third of the Fortune 500 and percent of the top US universities. Yuan’s wealth is listed on Forbes as at estimated $ 6.8 billion.
Speaking on Good Morning America on Wednesday, Yuan insisted: ‘You need to understand the security features about using Zoom. We take data privacy very very seriously. Our intention is never to sell customer data. After the meeting is over we do not track anything. ‘
But in a further blow, a report on Vice Motherboard on Wednesday revealed yet another alleged privacy leak claiming the personal information of’ at least Thousands of users, including their email address and photo, ‘has been unknowingly shared giving strangers the ability to attempt to start a video call.
According to Vice, the issues lies in Zoom’s’ Company Directory, ‘setting which automatically adds other people to a user’s list of contacts if they sign up with an email address that shares the same domain.
The idea is to make it easier to find contacts when the domain belongs to an individual company but, according to the report, ‘multiple Zoom users say they signed up with personal email addresses and Zoom pooled them together with thousands of other people as if they all worked for the same company, exposing their personal information to one another. ‘
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