Zoom apologises for privacy issues, announces a 90-day feature freeze

Starting next week, the Zoom CEO will also be hosting a weekly webinar to “provide privacy and security updates to our community

Zoom will also conduct a comprehensive review with third-party experts. (Zoom)

Video conferencing app Zoom has been in news off lately owing to its exponentially growing popularity amid the Covid-19 lockdown. This has prompted a spotlight on its privacy and security issues. Now, the company has apologized for the safety issues that users were facing on its platform. The company has also announced a series of measures that it was taking in the coming days to mitigate them.

Zoom founder and CEO Eric S Yuan in a blog post explained that the company had designed the app primarily for enterprises with full IT support. "...we did not design the product with the foresight that, in a matter of weeks, every person in the world would suddenly be working, studying, and socializing from home," he wrote the blog post.

"For the past several weeks, supporting this influx of users has been a tremendous undertaking and our sole focus...we recognize that we have fallen short of the community's - and our own - privacy and security expectations. For that, I am deeply sorry, and I want to share what we are doing about it," he added.

Apart from apologizing, Yuan also shared the steps that Zoom was taking to mitigate the issues with its platform. For starters, he announced a feature-freeze for coming 90 days during which time the company would shift all its "engineering resources to focus on our biggest trust, safety, and privacy issues."

In addition to that, Zoom will also conduct a comprehensive review with third-party experts, prepare a transparency report and enhance its bug bounty program among other things. Starting next week, the Zoom CEO will also be hosting a weekly webinar to "provide privacy and security updates to our community."

"Transparency has always been a core part of our culture. I am committed to being open and honest with you about areas where we are strengthening our platform and areas where users can take steps of their own to best use and protect themselves on the platform," he added in the blog.