Zoom is promising to address and fix several issues that have come to the surface as its popularity continues to grow.
The platform has been called out for leaking users’ email addresses and photos and giving strangers the ability to start a video call with them. Another recent report details two bugs that hackers can use to take over a Zoom user’s Mac, and also allow them to control the webcam and microphone.
In response to the reports, Zoom says that it is going to address the problems over the next 90-days. The company promises to be more transparent with its practices, and says that its resources will now focus on safety and privacy issues.
Eric S. Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, has published a lengthy blog post about how the company has been responding to a surge in users. Yuan notes in December, there were a maximum of 10 million daily users. In March, it had reached more than 200 million daily users, which is a significant jump.
Yuan explains that the platform was mainly created for enterprise customers, and that it was not designed to be used by every person in the world suddenly working, studying and socializing from home.
“We now have a much broader set of users who are utilizing our product in a myriad of unexpected ways, presenting us with challenges we did not anticipate when the platform was conceived,” Yuan writes.
Zoom says that it is going to improve its bug bounty program to identify security bugs. It also plans to release a transparency report that will detail how many requests it received from governments and law enforcement asking for user data.
Image credit: Zoom
