Zoom’s hoping to win back clients who banned them due to privacy woes

Zoom Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan has focused on bolstering the security of his videoconferencing application with the goal of winning back customers

Zoom Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan has focused on bolstering the security of his videoconferencing application with the goal of winning back customers (AP)

Zoom Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan has focused on bolstering the security of his videoconferencing application with the goal of winning back customers who abandoned the company because of privacy concerns.

The government of Taiwan stopped using Zoom, "but in the future, after they understand the true facts, they will be able to change their decision," Yuan said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "We are an American business. Security and safety are very important for us."

"Most" of the clients who have left Zoom Video Communications Inc. because of security lapses are already publicly known, Yuan said, including Tesla Inc., Space Exploration Technologies Corp., and the governments of Germany and Taiwan. The San Jose, California-based company serves companies including Uber Technologies Inc. and Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV.

Yuan has been making numerous public appearances to apologize for the incidents and pledge greater security and privacy as the once little-known app for business communications has exploded during the pandemic with more than 200 million users turning to it for work-from-home meetings, virtual schooling, online cocktail parties and family gatherings. Zoom was sued by a shareholder Tuesday who alleged the company fraudulently concealed its lack of end-to-end encryption and its data transmissions to Facebook Inc., just one of several lawsuits that have emerged during the revelations about the software maker's privacy problems.

Yuan said he was working with the New York City Department of Education, the country's largest public education system, to use Zoom for remote learning. The department's IT team is interested in managing all virtual classrooms used by its schools from a master account, Yuan said. New York City earlier directed schools to use Microsoft Corp.'s Teams and Alphabet Inc.'s Google Meet because of "zoombombing" attacks in which strangers infiltrate virtual meetings and share inappropriate content. Yuan said that none of his videoconferencing rivals offer end-to-end encryption, citing Microsoft and Google.