A traumatising Zoombombing during meeting

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Didn't find your answer?

I've just read this distressing Linkedin post where someone had their Zoom meeting Zoombombed with distressing images after following all of the recommended security measures.

I'm hoping the answer will be no, but has anyone else experienced anything like this?

If anyone doesn't want to message publicly, please message me privately as I will be contacting Zoom to demand what they are doing about this.

I know this story is an extreme scenario, but I hope this post might put people on their guard. 

Replies (11)

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By zebaa
23rd May 2020 09:17

With Zoom you need to restrict the meeting log on. So not suitable for general 'anyone-come-along' type meetings. Like any tool, it has it's place. It's easy to use by people who meet to meet in small groups and who are not very computer literate.

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By Michael Beaver
26th May 2020 16:32

We ran a community online festival here in the South West. This was to replace the weekend long festival that we usually hold on the same weekend.

Most of the sessions were only for half an hour or 45 minutes and were by and large held on Zoom.

Our normal festival website showed the schedule, including the zoom meeting details for people to schedule in and log on to.

Of the 10 or so events, two got 'hacked' and showed either [***] or [***] propaganda or both. We always had a host looking after the meeting and in both circumstances managed to kick them out of the session quite quickly.

But we learned a few things:

1. The sessions that were targeted were aimed at children (a bedtime story session, and mum & baby yoga). The other sessions didn't get hassled.
2. Advertising the meeting details publicly meant that the details could be gleaned by bots trawling the internet for such things.
3. It was likely that the 'hackers' weren't people but were bots programmed to be a nuisance.
4. Setting up the sessions so that people had to wait to be let in prevented further blushes that day.

Zoom is great, but it's not the best tool for all circumstances. If you are just broadcasting, there are better tools, such as YouTube. If you want audience participation, then Zoom is great - but you have to choose between a secure and known audience, or taking the chance on bad people joining your session.

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By peter.wood100
28th May 2020 10:36

The family Zoombomb..... door opens, child emerges.... "daddy, I need a poo!!"

We're fine with Zoom so far, but open to other suggestions.

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By Peter Bussey
28th May 2020 10:57

We had a similar experience with an open networking meeting - but now follow the procedure to use a 'waiting room' before allowing access to the actual meeting. Zoom security is probably quite good - though if you send an invite publicly to get more people to attend it will always have the possibility of someone undesirable picking it up.

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By pauljohnston
28th May 2020 11:02

Practiceweb a subsidary of SIFT (who try and run this site) use Google Hangouts.

Try because without us it woulld not work!

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John Toon
By John Toon
28th May 2020 12:01

The local chamber of commerce had been running weekly zoom sessions until a similar incident happened.

The issues and solutions are well publicised

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Morph
By kevinringer
28th May 2020 13:21

I don't see how a meeting can be zoombombed if the waiting room is used. Maddy, you say the LinkedIn posted said they had followed all of the recommended security measures. Were they using the waiting room?

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Replying to kevinringer:
Maddy Christopher
By Maddy Christopher
04th Jun 2020 10:17

Yes, they specify that the waiting room was used: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoombombed-martin-baker/

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Morph
By kevinringer
28th May 2020 13:23

As well as Zoom I've been using Teams too. Very handy for when you need to work on a document collaboratively. Anyone know if Teams has security issues? Would Maddy's LinkedIn posted be safer with Teams?

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By PERMON
29th May 2020 13:35

I'm not sure that other potential videoconferencing solutions might not potentially suffer from the same problem unless one uses a "waiting room" or passworded join requirement is applied. The key is to apply the available security options regardless of which conferencing solution is used.

Having said that I have tried Webex a few times as well as Teams - the issue for me with Teams is that it comes with a lot of superfluous ( for a no staff sole practitioner) additional features.

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Elliott Chandler Picture
By elliottchandler
02nd Jun 2020 00:33

In my opinion the company behind zoom totally disgarded the privacy, safety and security of its potential users.

Microsoft Teams is Microsoft a global secure company. Teams is secure and provides all the features needed for all kind of online events. It's just a matter of getting to learn them.

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