S’pore Student Saw Obscene Images During Home-Based Learning After Her Zoom Was Hacked

Let’s face it: before today, you know Zoom as this:

Goody Feed Video Team: That’s a Dolly Zoom, not a Zoom.

Okay, whatever.

After today, Zoom might become your most-used app because your boss wants to have a meeting with you every minute, so you can’t work half-naked.

And we don’t just anyhowly come out with that conclusion.

200 million people used Zoom daily in March 2020 compared to just 10 million in December 2019.

It’s actually just a videoconferencing app: there are countless of such apps in the market, but many are allegedly using it because of its functionality and video / call quality.

I said allegedly because this is very subjective—and there’s always a possibility that it’s popular simply because it’s popular.

But in recent weeks, there have been security concerns about the app, which my colleague has written about here.

Here’s a summary:

• They allegedly send data to Facebook (but stopped doing that after they were “exposed”)
• There’s allegedly a security issue in which hackers can control the mic and webcam if you’re using Apple iMac
• It’s allegedly very easy for strangers to jump into the videoconferencing
• Zoom recordings are allegedly exposed

…and many more.

Once again, I said allegedly because no one would know for sure if they are indeed vulnerabilities, though its CEO has admitted that there were some “missteps” and they were working to resolve them.

But it might come a tad late, especially here in Singapore.

S’pore Student Saw Obscene Images During Home-Based Learning After Her Zoom Was Hacked

On the first day of Home-Based Learning, back in the days when Circuit Breaker measures were still not imposed, there were already some technical issues, though it wasn’t revealed whether Zoom was the culprit.

However, Zoom is one of the apps used to deliver lessons.

Back then, students had difficulty trying to log in to Zoom, which led a student missing all his classes in the morning.

But today, it was reported that something even more disturbing occurred.

According to The Straits Times, a secondary one student was watching a geography lesson when the stream turned into images of d**ks.

Two Caucasian men then appeared and told her class of 39 to “show us your b**bs”.

It’s unknown if the student was the only one who had seen that or everyone in her class experienced the same thing.

The incident is supposedly caused by hackers.

The mother immediately informed the school. She said, “When she is surfing the Internet, she does not encounter such things. Home-based learning is supposed to be a safe space, but now our children have to be exposed to such things?

“I know it’s difficult to manage but as a parent I feel very concerned.”

Zoom Hacked, Student’s Computer Hacked or Teacher’s Computer Hacked?

While it’s easy to dismiss it as the student’s fault for having a device that might be installed with malware, Zoom’s reputation in the last few weeks haven’t been great.

All Google and SpaceX employees are banned from using it, while schools in the US have also put restrictions on its usage.

A Zoom spokesperson has responded to this particular issue, but it’s a canned response: “We have been deeply upset by increasing reports of harassment on our platform and strongly condemn such behaviour. We are listening to our community of users to help us evolve our approach and help our users guard against these attacks.”

Let’s face it: when you watch a YouTube video or a Netflix show, this won’t happen.

And do you know that it’s precisely because of reasons like this that we can’t have our election online?

Here, take a look at this video and you’d understand (don’t worry, it’s from YouTube and not Zoom):

(Check out our YouTube channel for more informative & entertaining videos!)

In the meantime, if you’ve Zoomphobia now, I get you. Here are some other Zoom alternatives you can use:

• Skype (no meeting feature, though)
• Google Hangout
• Zoho Meeting
• Microsoft Teams
• Facebook Workplace (we’re using this even before we telecommute and it’s been working pretty well so far)

And in case you’re wondering, Facebook Workplace doesn’t require you to use your own personal Facebook account. I would have quit immediately if my boss gets to know what nasty things I’ve been writing about him on my personal Facebook account.

Boss: You do know I read all your articles, don’t you?