Zoom security consultant Alex Stamos told Reuters in an interview that the company plans to offer stronger videoconference encryption to paying customers, enterprises and institutions like schools, but not to free accounts. He cautioned that the plan could change, and that it wasn’t clear if non-profits, dissidents and other might get exceptions, but that was the current goal. A number of “technological, safety and business factors” went into the decision, according to Reuters.
While Stamos wasn’t too specific about the plan, he noted that full encryption would make it impossible for Zoom staff to address abuse in real-time and might rule out people calling in on phone lines.
The videoconferencing platform has boomed in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic, but has been plagued by myriad security issues. Those include Zoombombing, where an uninvited guest invades a video call and disrupts it with pornography or other shock content.
Adding full end-to-end encryption on every video call, however, would exclude customers who call in from phone lines. And Reuters reported tighter encryption would not allow Zoom’s own security teams to add themselves to calls to help customers in real time.
Zoom published a draft paper May 22nd outlining some of its encryption plans.
