Zoom CEO Eric Yuan addresses privacy, security issues in first webinar

Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan hosted the company’s first webinar where he discusses security and privacy measures it’s taking for the video conferencing app.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan hosts first webinar as part of company’s efforts to make the app more private and secure. (Zoom/YouTube)

Zoom has been trying to clean its mess of security and privacy issues that came up as the video conferencing app became popular. Zoom's CEO Eric Yuan hosted a livestream on YouTube which is also the debut of his weekly "Ask Eric Anything" webinar.

Interested users can post questions about Zoom and Eric will answer them. This weekly webinar is part of Zoom's efforts to fix its security and privacy issues. "Eric plans to use this platform over the next 90 days to address security, privacy, data, and any other concerns from Zoom users, and we'll share highlights from each of his sessions," Zoom said in a blog post.

"We have been working around the clock to ensure our users stay in touch and operational. We're also strengthening our commitment to security practices and privacy practices in this process and we're committing to this in the future as well," Eric said in his webinar address.

Eric discussed issues related to zoombombing which has been the biggest concern for the video conferencing platform. Zoom had rolled out an update earlier this month which makes passwords mandatory for meeting IDs. He also advised users on how to use personal and public meeting IDs depending on the importance of the video conference.

Eric also highlighted Zoom's encryption issue which had false claims. Zoom's meetings were discovered to not have end-to-end encryption as the company claimed. It later clarified saying their usage of encryption is different from other companies. But Zoom data is still decrypted at the server which gives access to the company.

"Today, the way we use AES encryption, the key is generated by our system. And we're working on a feature so that the key will be generated from you, from our customers," Eric said in the webinar.

Eric will be hosting another Zoom webinar next week and interested users can sign up for it here. The company also hired ex-Facebook security chief Alex Stamos to help beef up privacy and security of Zoom. Zoom will probably have to do a lot more to gain users' trust as it has already lost out among schools in the US, and Google just banned the desktop app from its employees.