‘I Messed Up,’ Says Zoom CEO After Rash Of Porn ‘Zoombombing’ (AVN)

Read the full article by Michael French at AVN.com 

Eric Yuan pledges new focus on ‘privacy and security’ as user numbers rise during lockdown.

The videoconferencing app Zoom has seen a sudden, massive rise in its popularity since one-third of the world went under some form of lockdown in the past several weeks. But what should be a bonanza for the company has turned into such a security nightmare for users, as AVN.com has reported, so much so that at least one senator felt compelled to pen a letter to CEO Eric Yuan demanding answers.

Whether Yuan has yet responded to Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s letter last week is unclear, but the 50-year-old billionaire did issue a mea culpa of sorts to The Wall Street Journal.

Since Zoom jumped from 10 million daily users to 200 million thanks to the coronavirus lockdown, in which video chats offer a quick, safe, albeit virtual method of face-to-face communication, reports of “Zoombombing” incidents have become widespread and frequent.

That’s when an uninvited guest infiltrates a Zoom teleconference and starts streaming unsolicited porn, or in some cases racist images and other forms of hate material. To pull off a “Zoombomb” does not even take much technical skill. All it requires is access to the video chat’s host URL, and a host who has not bothered to password-protect the session.