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Zoom Security Does not Look Good— Alternatives?
re: security
POV: I’m not concerned about privacy very much. Mainly, I’m concerned about compromise of my systems with Zoom as a vector for that compromise. It’s already bad enough with Apple security bugs.
I have a need for Zoom or equivalent, but I am not willing to compromise the security of my main computer or travel computer. What do I do? I used Zoom on iPad, but even there it has high risk security issues (see below). Specifcally, my requirements are:
- Capture an interview of 2 or more people that can be downloaded for upload/editing, etc. This rules out Zoom on iPad.
- Unbounded time limit (eg 37 minutes in non-desktop clients is unacceptable). This rules out Zoom on iPad.
- Must be acceptable for the other party to also without unusual software requirements eg MS Teams or similar is a non-starter. Zoom is of course the most used.
Maybe GotToMeeting or GoogleMeet or some such could do the job.But it’s a ton of work to evaluate the dozen or so out there, evaluating features and security.
Or, maybe the new Rumble platform’s ability to live-stream to multiple other services simultaneously would be the smart move, though I don’t necessarily need or want live streaming. And that would likely take a lot of effort to get it all working, based on what I’ve heard.
I considered Apple FaceTime, but it does not appear to have the recording capabilities I need, at least not that I can see. You can for exampe record the screen with sound, but it does not lay-up the participant video streams side by side, and it does not capture the sound bits over the wire; I think it just records the microphone meaning it would record the sound that is played from the other party, which is poor quality. Maybe I am wrong, but the online suggestions for how to do it look like pretty poor support and a real hack to do it properly (record your screen generically like anything else while making a Facetime call—lame). And what if text messages or alerts pop up while Facetiming? That could be a privacy/security headache.
Zoom security risks
Zoom is super popular,but it has an ongoing history of very high risk security flaws, and very recent history lying about its security issues and generally being dishonest, etc. Corporate culture does not change much, so I assume the Zoom organization is not to be trusted. And while you would be foolish to trust Wikipedia for much these days, the Wikipedia summary is pretty damning.
And Zoom’s privacy statement in essence says they can examine all your content for any reason whatsoever eg “public safety”. It is carte blanche. Then they can also basically sell your info to all sorts of places too. And I wonder who really controls Zoom, is the CCP involved?
Finally, Zoom.app for macOS is not available on the Apple App Store, so it does not have review by Apple either.
Below, I applaud the public listing, but the frequence and severity of high risk security bugs with no apparent trend change is troubling. This listing are the bugs that the company was forced to address by public scrutiny, but what about all the ones not yet found, or known (or deliberate!) that the company is aware of but does not list or care to list?
Zoom Security Bulletins
