Be careful with Zoom guys.
Edit: It seems that they have updated their TOS , however I will never trust a company like this , remember with all of this AI going around right now Data is the new oil.
At this point if we go back to messenger pigeons I half expect to see spam tied to the other leg.
I love how there’s a whole generation of people who think that we went straight from email to to Slack and Discord. There was a whole, vibrant, ecosystem of XMPP and IRC services before these walled gardens showed up and supplanted open protocols in order to data mine their users.
I’m preaching to the choir in here, obviously, but we’ve been preaching this gospel for years and nobody cared. Not looking so crazy now. Unfortunately, the damage is done. Privacy has lost.
Privacy has been beaten to a bloody pulp, but the fight doesn’t need to be called yet. Don’t give up, keep telling everyone you can. I know things are looking low right now, but every person you reach matters.
In the case of Zoom, an approach that could actually work is having every step of the solution already completed if you’ve got an employer trying to push Zoom on employees. Make sure you can clearly state here’s the problem, here’s why it’s dangerous for the company, here’s a great alternative, here’s why it’s safest for the company, and here’s how you install it. Reach out to the IT dept if you’re not the IT dept to get them on board. If the advice is coming from multiple employees, that will help your case.
I have gone back to using XMPP and have my family and friends using it. There has been a uptik in development of this protocol and the mobile apps have gotten way better. Facebook, whats app, google, and countless others all started with XMPP/jabber and they all could talk to each other. That is until they walled them off to try and force everyone on to there app. Its so dumb that we had a federated chat system that was taking hold until the big tech players got involed and sucked up the users then turned off federation. Chat could and still can be like email if there is critical mass on one of these federated protocols so everyone will start useing it.
My phone number is run though my XMPP server, no matter what phone or computer I use I can access my phone number. Hell I could drop my phone plan all together, if I wanted to and just use wifi for calls. 90% of the time im connected to wifi anyways. I use jmp.chat and the android app cheogram you should check it out.
How did you set up your phone number to go through your own XMPP server? That sounds awesome.
I guess that’s what jmp.chat does.
It seems like it’s a managed solution though
Sorry to disappoint you, but a can of spam may be too heavy for a pigeon.
It could grip it by the husk.
Laden or unladen?
(Sorry, I only vaguely remember the sketch)
What you’re saying is: It’s not a question of where he grips it; it’s a simple matter of weight ratios?
Can of spam sure, but they happen to sell a 2.5oz single slice bag of spam. Surely a pigeon should be able to carry that.
Zoom was always a gigantic shitshow and borderline illigal in a lot of countrys.
More than borderline, but no court ever gives a fuck
Schools in my country are not allowed to use it at all, so they kinda do.
That was admin decision, not courts. But anyway looks like your location has [NOT] been greased properly but don’t worry I am sure some clown is working on it as week speak. Those juice public sector contracts are prime time for corruption.
If you need teleconferencing with screen share I highly recommend Jitsi. Easy to set up, pretty low system requirements, and open source.
rustdesk too!
On the thread about this on HN someone posted a link stating Jitsi has the same policy as Zoom regarding this matter. It’s equally bad.Edit: I stand corrected, apologies. It’s not the same policy as zoom.
I’m talking about using a self-hosted Jitsi instance. That one will work on a completely air-gapped network so you don’t have to share data with them.
I feel like I’m missing something, but air gapping a video conferencing system seems counterproductive
Not if you have a large facility that needs videoconferencing and needs to be secure. Ostensibly there would be people who are also on the airgapped network.
https://www.8x8.com/terms-and-conditions/privacy-policy
It doesn’t seem the ToS supports your claim. Can you provide a link?
Seems they may ask to use the meeting data if you record or livestream, but not otherwise. So not equally bad.
from “4. Your Content” (emphasis mine)
You give 8×8 (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that Your content works better with the Service), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, and distribute such content solely for the limited purpose of operating and enabling the Service to work as intended for You and for no other purposes.
Despite the good intention from the company, this sounds like lawyer-speak that legally protect them if they decided to use your content to train ML model. IANAL though.
But it’s not the same as Zooms policy. I agree. I stand corrected and edited my original comment.
Sadly incorrect.
Louis Rossman has a video about zoom trying to sponsor him, Jitsi request only what is needed for functionality only and there terms of service mention that explicitly. How do you blur a background without detecting a face etc.
Not sure if they have only just added a clarification, but it now says
Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.
Which seems to imply that by agreeing to their TOS, you are giving consent for them to use this.
Doesn’t it also call out that any recordings are fair game
THIS! When I read Zoom’s response to the tweet that was the focus of this original post, my initial thought was “…but you are having them agree to terms without an opt-out”
As I understand it’s extortionate consent though. Either you “consent” to your private data being used in this way, or you can’t use Zoom.
Good thing there’s self hosted and E2EE alternatives.
Including enterprise calls? Lots of companies use this for client calls etc…
Ya, I’m gonna have to see if we need to blacklist this for our org now. That’s not gonna be popular.
My huge corporation banned us from ever using it ever. They were iffy on it before, so previously we were only allowed to use it if we don’t handle any sensitive data, but now we aren’t allowed even have it be installed, they don’t trust any of it
Impressive. I know many corps still use Leveno laptops even though they got caught putting spyware in their firmware.
Got a link for that? First time I’ve heard that.
Apparently this has happened more then once. I can find more articles once I’m on my desktop, but here’s one of the more recent examples.
https://ophtek.com/lenovo-laptops-shipped-with-new-malware-risk/
Thanks. My company had lots of Lenovo devices. I wonder if they’re aware of this stuff.
I use Jitsi professionally. Never had a problem. I send a link over and they hop on via the web interface and get it working quickly without prior knowledge of the platform. Oh ya, minor detail: it’s FOSS.
Zoom got on the map because of covid and now that that’s over and working from home isn’t as popular as it was a couple years ago they need to figure out another way to make money, looks like they are selling customers data to do so.
Zoom isn’t even allowing their employees to be remote anymore !
Fuck ze plebs! They zoom from office!
The hypocrisy
Well, being a slave master aint easy
They got on the map because they were easier to use, which was a reputation earned by doing things like hijacking pre-install verification scripts to install it, running an always on and non-uninstallable server on your computer without you knowing, so it could access your webcam without needing to open the app, faking system prompts to get your root password…
Then there was lying about end to end encryption being enabled, and sending the unencrypted traffic to China for no discernable reason
Zoom is just a shitty company that has never been on the right side of user privacy. They’ll do anything to make a buck.
On any non-open source or cloud based software, assume all opt out switches go to /dev/null
RIP Zoom
Remember when everyone was buying zoom stocks?
They have just updated the ToS tho to now exclude using your data without permission for training AI. But Jitsi Meet is still a better option ;-)
“Hey, Joe, tell people we won’t use their data for AI without their permission!”
“But… they already gave permission by accepting the TOS, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but they’re too stupid to realize that. So just keep repeating that we won’t use their data without their permission. That’ll get ‘em off our backs.”
Every day I thank the stars I never got involved with any of that shit back in 2020
When they says “recording” do they mean any video chat you have or only those you record and save?
Title probably needs to be reworded. Terms clearly mention they won’t use it without user consent, not that they MUST use it. Doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way, but just don’t consent for it when asked and you’re probably okay (I’m mentioning this for those who have no choice but to use it, for things like work)
But if you don’t consent, do they still let you use their services? I’m going to bet that, at best, it’ll be designed to make users think they must consent to use the service.
What does consent consist of? Most other TOS state that using the product means you consent to whatever is included in the TOS.
So don’t agree to the terms of service? This could count as consent.
Good alternatives you can self-host are Nextcloud Talk, Jitsi, BigBlueButton, Unhangout, and Matrix. Find a community instance of any of these if you don’t have the chops to host your own.
