April 2, 2020

Zoom won’t add new features for 90 days as it tackles privacy, security woes

» Create your own app. Pay What You Want Android Developer’s Bundle: $1

Video conferencing app Zoom has seen an explosion in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people to stay at home. But the app has also courted controversy due to its numerous privacy and security concerns.

Now, the team behind Zoom has confirmed plans to enact a feature freeze for 90 days while it addresses these problems (h/t: The Verge). In other words, it won’t be adding any new features for three months and will devote its resources to fixing privacy and security issues instead.

The company has also announced several other moves in a bid to clean up the service. These measures include reviews with third party experts and users to address security, a beefed-up bug bounty program, and a weekly webinar to provide security and privacy updates to users.

Zoom’s team also confirmed plans to deliver a transparency report detailing requests for data and content. This would be in line with several other major companies, such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Zoom Meetings: 10 tips and tricks you should know about

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan also disclosed that the firm now had over 200 million daily meeting users across free and paid tiers. Yuan said that the firm had roughly 10 million daily meeting users at the end of December, illustrating the service’s massive growth.

The video conferencing app made headlines this month due to its explosive growth, but it also made the news due to privacy and security issues. Some of these issues include “zoombombing,” device data being sent to Facebook, and a lack of end-to-end encryption.