School Warns of Alarming Zoom Security Loophole, Says Zoom Not Safe For Unmonitored Children

by Monsey.info

Zoom is a great tool that has allowed schools to continue functioning through the pandemic, and has allowed people to get together virtually when in person was not an option.

But is it safe?

According to a school in Cincinnati, Ohio, it not at all safe for unmonitored children.

“As an update to my previous email regarding Zoom, I want to reiterate what I mentioned last week in perhaps more clear terms: Zoom is not a safe platform,” The school wrote in an email to parents. “It is dangerous for children to be left alone on Zoom with the assumption that Zoom is safe.”

According to the school, the issue is in the way the software works, allowing people to enter a meeting if they have the correct ID meeting entry, which in many cases are simply common words.

“By typing certain common words into the “meeting ID” field instead of numbers, along with no password in most cases, the user is instantly connected to live meetings filled with pornography and pedophiles. There is no limit to what might be viewed in these meetings.”

The alarm was raised by the school after coming across the issue in school and at private homes, where children are many times left unattended for long periods of time.

“This is also true on devices marketed as “Kosher” devices. Unless the device is locked down to a specific list of zoom meeting IDs, you should assume that the device is in fact not protected from the above-mentioned content.”

According to the email, the school had reached out to TAG, an organization the helps provide internet security and “kosher” devices, who had apparently been unaware of the possible security concern.

“It is particularly shocking to hear about and it seems hard for people to believe, I think because of the implicit trust that that the frum Jewish world has placed in the platform. This trust is misplaced.”