Schools Ditch Zoom Amid Concerns Over Online Learning Security
With
so many schools closed, the Zoom video meeting app has become wildly
popular among educators, but it’s now under scrutiny for security
and privacy issues.
School
leaders in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas have
announced they’re discontinuing their use of the Zoom
videoconferencing service for distance learning because of security,
privacy, harassment and other concerns. And individual schools in Los
Angeles and elsewhere are also switching to alternatives, like
Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts and WebEx.
As
NPR reported last week, the FBI issued a warning about incidents of
school Zoom meetings being disrupted. There have been reports of
racist and pornographic imagery being shown to young children. Some
intrusions may originate with students pranking their classmates, but
Gizmodo reported there are also organized “Zoombombing” campaigns
online.
Zoom
has soared in popularity as people around the world shelter in place
to protect from the spreading coronavirus. Partly this is because
Zoom meetings can be set up to be accessed from anywhere by anyone
with just a web link — no account or software download required.
But this ease of use also makes it easier for intruders to show up.
While
not designed as an education technology product, the company had
advertised itself for use by K-12 schools during coronavirus-related
school closures, making premium features available to educators for
free.
In a
statement to NPR, Zoom referred educators to an updated set of
security tips and said it had updated the default settings for its
education-based users to give more control to teachers and other
meeting hosts.
For
students, parents and teachers, the abandonment of Zoom means once
again having to learn the ins and outs of a new videoconferencing
system. Some are asking whether it wouldn’t be better to keep Zoom
and simply use the privacy and security controls that were always
available.
Amelia
Vance, a student privacy expert with the nonprofit Future of Privacy
Forum, recommends that schools stick with platforms designed for
education, such as Google’s G Suite for Education.
Still,
considering that Zoom was not designed as an education technology
product, she says, “I don’t know that Zoom is any worse, and it
may in many ways be better than a lot of the platforms out there,
especially when it comes to security, accessibility and certainly
when it comes to ease of use.”
But,
she says, Zoom could have anticipated these privacy issues. “And
now Zoom has the very difficult task of attempting to regain trust.”
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