SAN FRANCISCO – A spokesman for Zoom Communications, the popular on-line video conference platform, said alleged improper sharing of private information with Facebook that got Zoom sued is being corrected.
“Zoom takes its users’ privacy extremely seriously,” Zoom communications director Farshad Hashmatulla told the Northern California Record . “We would like to share a change that we have made regarding the use of Facebook’s SDK."
Zoom has been hit with a class action lawsuit for allegedly sharing users' data with companies like Facebook without the okay of the plaintiffs.
Filed in a federal court in California, the complaint alleges Zoom failed to safeguard the private information of millions of users revealing information without permission to Facebook and possibly additional third parties. The suit plaintiffs said is a violation of the California Unfair Competition Law, the Consumers Legal Remedies Act and the Consumer Privacy Act.
According to a report in The Hill, the iOS (Apple mobile software) version of the Zoom app sent user information to Facebook, even to users who did not possess an account with Facebook. Zoom reportedly supplied data to Facebook when a user used an app, relaying information on the user's device such as the make and the time zone the person was in.
The information also allegedly included the phone carrier a user employed and an advertiser ID.
"The unique advertising identifier allows companies to target the user with advertisements," The Hill report quoted from the lawsuit allegations. "This information is sent to Facebook by Zoom regardless of whether the user has an account with Facebook."
However, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told The Hill the data-sharing came about from Zoom giving iOS (mobile Apple) users the option to login to the app with their Facebook account, and that the company was unaware of the practice until March 25.
Hashmatulla indicated the misunderstanding that resulted in the lawsuit was bascially a glitch.
“We were made aware on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, that the Facebook SDK (shares your app content to Facebook) was collecting device information unnecessary for us to provide our services,” he explained. “The information collected by the Facebook SDK did not include information and activities related to meetings such as attendees, names, notes, but included information about devices such as the mobile OS type and version, the device time zone, device OS, device model and carrier, screen size, processor cores, and disk space.
We decided to remove the Facebook SDK in our iOS clients and have reconfigured the features so that users will still be able to log in with Facebook via their browser,” he added. “Users will need to update to the latest version of our application that’s already available at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time on Friday, March 27, 2020, in order for these changes to take hold, and we strongly encourage them to do so.”
Zoom has seen a recent surge in its business The Hill report said. In recent weeks hundreds of businesses mandating employees to work remotely at home because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic have used such video conference services.
“At the same time, the company began to face more scrutiny over its privacy practices,” The report added.
New York Attorney General Letitia James reportedly sent Zoom a letter voicing concern over the possibility of “malicious third party hackers” gaining access to consumer webcams. In addition, the FBI is looking into what is termed “Zoom-bombing,” the disruption of video chats with hate or pornographic images.