Imagine following one of the Zoom lectures of prof Ting Li or prof Yashar Ghiassi-Farrokhfal and suddenly being interrupted by a troll trying to pull off a prank. This is called “Zoombombing” and it means that an uninvited person invades a Zoom meeting and tries to interrupt this. However, Zoom bombers are not bored teenagers trying to get some laughs from their classmates anymore. Nowadays, these are organized attacks trying to shock and disturb innocent people with extreme messages.
As we all started to use the videoconferencing app more and more since the outbreak of COVID-19, these Zoom bombings started to happen more often too. Unfortunately, the messages started to become darker and darker. From racist, sexist to even sexual child abuse material was shown by the Zoom bombers. Moreover, these events are also being used to advocate extreme political messages.
Some examples of disturbing hijacks are trolls who in March communicated that “Alcohol is so good!” during an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in New York. Also, in April a Zoom raider who invaded an online Holocaust memorial service in Berlin showed images of Adolf Hitler. Several people reported they can’t get the distressing images out of their heads. Footage of these hijacks also started to circulate on other social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter which enforced the bad intentions of the hijackers.
There are of course some measurements that people can set to protect their Zoom meeting. Zoom has released a guidance guide to inform its users on how to make their conferences more secure. Furthermore, they announced on the 5th of April 2020 some features to enhance the security enabled by default.
From my perspective, the problem is caused by major tech firms. Their business operations are all about speed, speed, and speed. The tech climate is very competitive, and firms need to move quickly to survive. However, during the race, they (deliberately) forget to think about the ethics of tech. The CEO of Zoom reported to the NY Times: “We were focusing on business enterprise customers,” Mr. Yuan said. “However, we should have thought about ‘What if some end-user started using Zoom’” for nonbusiness events, “maybe for family gatherings, for online weddings.” He added: “The risks, the misuse, we never thought about that.” Fiesler and Garrett (2020) us the term “ethical debt” to describe the societal harms issued by choosing the easy option in software development.
So, what could we do about this? Bad people with bad intentions will always exist. Therefore, future software engineers and developers should think about how their technology could be abused and how to make it as difficult as possible to do so. This could be done by creating a “user persona”, and to try to imagine all kinds of different personas and scenarios one could use the technology for. Moreover, we – information students – should be taught on the ethics of tech and how we will incorporate it into our future work.
Do you have other thoughts regarding this issue? Please let me know in the comments!
Sources
https://www.howtogeek.com/667183/what-is-zoombombing-and-how-can-you-stop-it/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/technology/zoom-harassment-abuse-racism-fbi-warning.html
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7je5y/zoom-bombers-private-calls-disturbing-content
https://blog.zoom.us/a-message-to-our-users/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/zoom-video-privacy-security-coronavirus.html
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ethical-tech-starts-with-addressing-ethical-debt/
Nice article Diana! However, I think we must be careful with placing all the blame on the software companies of this world. For example, as we have seen recently in the video regarding deep fake speeches, software companies intend to produce this product for the good. They admit it can also be used for bad purposes but should for that reason all innovation be halted? Where do we stop then?
I understand it is important and essential for software engineers to realize the negative uses their products can have, and to prevent it from happening. However, it should be a society-wide endeavor, also including government agencies and public institutions that publicly advocate against misuses. Children should at an early age be confronted with the ethics of using certain products, in order to prevent them for hacking certain companies, purely out of curiosity.
As for the Zoombombing, an easy fix to at least prevent the bulk of it happening, is enforcing the usage of passwords for the meetings. Far too often it is seen that meetings are not protected and anyone can ‘walk in’ when they want. The responsibility lies not only at the software company, naturally, but also at the institutions that advocate the usage of this product.
Thank you for your comment Jeroen! I do agree that it is indeed a society problem where governments and public institutions should intervein in. However, a big focus on this should be esthablished within tech companies. Only together we can protect the weak ones from these trolls 🙂
Hi, Diana,
Good topic and I agree that major tech giants should take major responsibilities when they set their business objectives. We can frequently see the news about data abuse and not an appropriate use of social media and such. The tech giants often take extreme actions when their dominant positions are being threatened. Here we can notice the importance of regulations towards these tech giants and their operations. Many associations aim to protect consumer’s privacy and legal right. For example, EU data protection rules, known as the EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), not only pose regulations to companies but also guide consumers to use emerging technologies appropriately.
Despite active actions that can be taken from companies, consumers should improve their ethical study as well.
Hi Zcvapor! Thank you for your comment, I appreciate your view on the privacy protection side. I agree that we – consumers – should increase our ethical awareness especially on technology.
Thank you for this interesting blog post Diana! I wasn’t aware of the concept ‘Zoombombing’ and I think it is important to create more awareness around the dark sides of videoconferencing.
It is important that developers of platforms are aware of different users and the risk of misuse, so good to hear the CEO of Zoom is now! However, like you mentioned in your post, it is difficult to be able to protect the platform for people that have bad intentions. I think that hackers will always find a way in, so it is important for companies to plan for it.
Let’s hope at least for now that we won’t be interrupted by a troll during the upcoming lectures!
Great post Diana, thank you for highlighting these interesting issues with new technological developments.
I agree that more companies should be mindful about the negative sides of software and this should become a top priority for software developers. However, I think that the government should play a bigger role here. I agree with you that companies themselves need to think about the risks, but companies will always see profit (in Zoom’s case more users) as their main priority, unfortunately that is how the world of business works. Therefore, I think regulations about security and privacy should also come from our governments, which need to be more alert about new technological developments and the social issues that come with them. They can then impose software companies to be more strict about their security and ask a certain security level which need be adhered to.
I hope companies and our governments will take their responsibility in the future!
Nice topic Diana! I’m personally thinking that a way to discover potential security threats before they actually happen is to organize hackathons. This safe environment can ensure that companies do not only take action after security vulnerabilities get detected.