EDGE-UCATION
PCMA COLUMN
PREVENT ZOOMBOMBING Author: Michelle Russell, editor-in-chief of Convene
Caitlin O’Malley, DES, an education associate at PCMA,
That’s likely because in this coronavirus-related remote
was monitoring the chat on the 16 April webinar, “Get
working and online learning world, the incidence of
Empowered: Your Professional LinkedIn Makeover,” when she
Zoombombing – when uninvited attendees break into
noticed one person asking the same question a few different
and disrupt your meeting – is surging.
times in Zoom’s chat function. “I have a question,” Joe typed in, and a second later, “Can everyone see this message?”.
According to a c/net article, “No More Zoombombing:
O’Malley, thinking he was new to Zoom and needed some
4 Steps to a More Secure Video Chat,” it is easy to Zoombomb
help, responded that he had changed his settings so that
a meeting – in many cases, all it takes is a simple Google
everyone, indeed, could see his messages.
search for URLs that include “Zoom.us”. That can bring up the unprotected links of multiple meetings that anyone
Other helpful participants chimed in and some provided
can get into. Similarly, links to meetings can be found on
similar instruction: “Joe, questions should be submitted in
organisational pages on social media, the article points
the Q&A tab.” Still he persisted, asking, “Does that mean
out, which is a practice that PCMA, which often livestreams
more people than you can see it?”.
webinars on its Facebook page with a Zoom link, will now change, O’Malley said.
Again, O’Malley assured him that, with his current setting, everyone could see what he was typing. If he changed it back
Last week, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan responded to users’ privacy
to panellists only, just the speaker, event tech expert Dahlia
and security concerns saying the company is freezing feature
El Gazzar, DES, and O’Malley and her education associate
updates to address these concerns in the next 90 days.
colleague, Judith De La Vega, would see his comments. De La
In the meantime, whilst c/net said there are “no guarantees
Vega stepped in, again thinking Joe was having trouble finding
against determined trolls,” there are some things you can do
his way around Zoom. “Hi Joe,” she wrote in the chat, “Please
to improve your overall privacy levels on Zoom. Here are
select ‘All Panellists’ from the To: section in the chat, or enter
some recommendations:
your question in the Q&A box.”
CHANGE YOUR SETTINGS:
Seconds later, Joe unleashed the same profane racial slur over
• Don’t use your personal meeting ID for the meeting —
and over again in the chat. O’Malley said it seemed like it took
use a per-meeting ID, exclusive to a single meeting.
“forever” to kick him out of the Zoom but, when she looked
• Enable the “Waiting Room” feature so that you can see
back at the chat record later, she felt better realising that it
who is trying to join the meeting before letting them in.
had taken her only seven seconds to eject PCMA’s first
• Disable other options, including the ability for others to
webinar Zoombomber.
Join Before Host. Then disable screen-sharing for non- hosts, and also the remote control function. Finally, disable
Not wanting to further distract participants in the chat from
all file-transferring, annotations, and the autosave feature
the presentation, De La Vega waited until the end to apologise
for chats. (c/net provides step-by-step instructions.)
to participants for the troll. O’Malley said that everyone was
• Once the meeting starts and everyone is in, lock the
completely understanding.
meeting to outsiders and assign at least two meeting co-hosts (as is PCMA’s practice).
26
| June 2020
