Zoom is an American publicly traded company that was founded in 2011 and has approximately 2000 employees. In 2019, it posted sales of $620 million. Via Zoom, it's easy to start a digital meeting with multiple people. This can be done by calling one of the Zoom phone numbers, but also via video calling software. You do not need to download a separate program, as a conversation can be started via the browser.

The company was founded by the Chinese immigrant Eric Yuan, a Computer Science and Mathematics graduate. He successfully took the plunge to the United States in the late 1990s.

With strong ties to China, where a third of its employees work, most R&D work takes place there. This makes the company cheap, but also vulnerable. In the run-up to the IPO in 2019, Zoom had to recognize that the close relationship with China can pose security and privacy risks.

Zoom is very user-friendly and therefore comes in handy in times of lockdowns. It gives the user the opportunity to get in touch with family members, employees, students, and so on.

This is also reflected in the figures. In 2019, Zoom had roughly 10 million users every day. In the months of March and April 2020, this had increased to roughly 200 million users per day.

Zoom's security can be quite problematic. Security experts have discovered a few flaws. For example, there is a bug that can steal the windows password. Another bug makes it possible for an outsider to enter a meeting and act as an administrator or to take over the microphone or webcam.

Zoom bombing is also possible. Strangers enter a meeting to leave their message of any kind there. And so there are more flaws.

Concerns about data retention and the possibility that third parties can break in are further compounded by the discovery that Zoom IOS app automatically passed data to Facebook. Zoom's Privacy Code made no mention of this.

The flawed privacy code can have two worrying consequences:

A: There is a lack of transparency in the technical capabilities of the application. This enables the host of a call to undertake matters that remain invisible to the other participants. For example, he can record the conversations, elaborate them and discuss them later with third parties or pass the information on to third parties.

B: So the host can pass the information on to third parties without asking or getting permission. This is contrary to the GDPR/AVG. This requires that data collection may only take place on the basis of 'consent', which must also be well-informed and voluntary.

Under pressure from the erupted criticism, Zoom says they have tightened their security and privacy policy. It now reads that the "content" that users produce will not be shared. Zoom also claims to have never done this. Zoom also says that it has been overtaken by its turbulent growth. As mentioned, 200 million people now use Zoom every day, including 90,000 schools in more than 20 countries. The problem with this statement is that there were concerns about Zoom's privacy policy before the case exploded.

In defense of its current rattling privacy policy, Zoom argues that it focused primarily on the business market. They never thought that home workers and school children would use Zoom en masse. That is very strange reasoning at first sight. There would be very different rules in the field of security and privacy for companies, citizens, or even schoolchildren. This line of reasoning is therefore questionable and gives the impression that Zoom would have been the starting point for the lack of privacy.

Not quite. Take the encryption of data, for example. Zoom has admitted that until recently there was no end-to-encryption of data. End-to-end means that the provider cannot access that data at any time. Without that form of encryption, they can. That doesn't automatically mean the provider will do that, of course. However, Zoom also never mentioned that it will not attempt to intercept data or record communications! So there remains a doubt.

These question marks are also possible with the new transparency policy. On March 27, 2020, Zoom stated that it will record any meeting that the host desires. This means that Zoom has access to certain forms of content at all times. Zoom does not say anywhere that it does not store other forms of content. As long as Zoom does not state clearly that it uses end-to-end encryption, the content can still be accessed. We don't know if it will happen, nor how long it will keep the stored content.

Zoom says it complies with US law on government access to stored data. However, Zoom's field of activity is worldwide. This means that, for example, the US government has potential access to foreign data thanks to the Cloud Act. This means that the government can not only demand access to all kinds of company data but even confidential data from foreign powers.

Yes, a New York prosecutor has written a letter to the company in San Jose, California asking for clarification about Zoom's security policy. She points to Zoom's explosively growing popularity in times of Covid-19.