{"id":41540,"date":"2020-11-10T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T10:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=8835b79ac2149d3ea75a6efed9742dc2"},"modified":"2020-11-10T10:37:07","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T10:37:07","slug":"zoom-settles-with-the-ftc-over-deceptive-encryption-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/zoom-settles-with-the-ftc-over-deceptive-encryption-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoom settles with the FTC over ‘deceptive’ encryption claims"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Bobby Hellard<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
10 Nov, 2020<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has\u00a0reached a settlement with Zoom after it sued the company for “unfair and deceptive security practices”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following the FTC’s\u00a0announcement<\/a>, shares in the video conferencing service tumbled. Zoom\u00a0closed at 17.4% lower on Monday, with news of positive coronavirus vaccine data also having an impact, according to\u00a0CNBC<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThis also affected a number of stocks for service that had been boosted by the pandemic, such as Netflix (8.6% decline) and Amazon (5.1%), but Zoom appeared to be the worst-hit.<\/p>\n

With the onset of the pandemic, and the sudden need to stay home, Zoom saw a massive spike in users, turning into a household name almost overnight. This brought greater scrutiny on the firm and highlighted a number of security issues, one of which being a lack of\u00a0end-to-end encryption<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In its settlement reached with the FTC, the company was accused of collecting\u00a0user data during recorded conferences. Zoom initially said it had “end-to-end, 26-bit encryption”, but in fact, it “provided a lower level of security,” the FTC said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“During the pandemic, practically everyone – families, schools, social groups, businesses – is using video conferencing to communicate, making the security of these platforms more critical than ever,” said Andrew Smith, the FTC’s director of consumer protection.<\/p>\n

“Zoom’s security practices didn’t line up with its promises, and this action will help to make sure that Zoom meetings and data about Zoom users are protected.”<\/p>\n

The FTC has called on Zoom to “implement a robust information security programme” as well as a “prohibition on privacy and security misrepresentations”.<\/p>\n

Zoom is arguably one of the biggest success stories of the year, reportedly recording a\u00a0355% revenue increase<\/a>\u00a0in the second quarter of 2020. The figures are even more impressive when considering the number of privacy issues it also had to deal with, such as ‘Zoom bombing<\/a>‘ where unwanted actors invade meetings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The service has been used by both remote workers and those stuck at home, to keep in touch with friends and family, but the announcement from Pfizer and BioNTech of a vaccine candidate with a 90% success rate during late-stage trials have suggested Zoom might not enjoy continued success beyond the pandemic.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bobby Hellard<\/p>\n

10 Nov, 2020 <\/p>\n

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has\u00a0reached a settlement with Zoom after it sued the company for “unfair and deceptive security practices”.\u00a0
\nFollowing the FTC’s\u00a0announcement, shares in the v…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41541,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41540\/revisions\/41541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}