On 31/1/25 05:16, George at Clug wrote:
Bret,
Thanks for replying.
On Friday, 31-01-2025 at 07:31 Bret Busby wrote:
On 31/1/25 04:05, George at Clug wrote:
On Friday, 31-01-2025 at 01:11 Bret Busby wrote:
On 30/1/25 17:44, D MacDougall wrote:
On 1/29/25 21:20, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2025 at 12:28:55PM -0800, Donald MacDougall wrote:
I've been using Zoom from the beginning of the Corona virus epidemic
[...]
and haven't had any trouble that I think could be related to Zoom [...]
Thanks for your report. Prompted by this thread I went to the Wikipedia.
After having read that, I'll try not to use Zoom (and to convince others
to do likewise) as far as I can.
Cheers
Just now I read the article in Wikipedia and realized that I had read it
before several years ago. There were a considerable number of security
issues back in 2020. I haven't spent the time to go through them all in
detail. My university was involved in the early development of Zoom for
use in teaching university classes. I was not personally involved in
this. From those who were, I understood that the company was very
responsive to requests for features that were needed to make it useful
for the university. This was all going on before the pandemic started
and the use of Zoom exploded overnight. I was impressed with how fast
they were able to scale up. They were there at the right time. I
think many of the problems resulted from this unexpected growth. It was
tested in the fire, so to speak. The security reports in Wikipedia were
all from 2020 or earlier, and nothing seems to have been added since.
Perhaps there are but I didn't see anything and haven't heard of
anything, so, optimistically I've been thinking that the problems have
been mostly ironed out.
From only the Wikipedia report and no further reading it's not clear to
me whether using a web browser to attend a zoom meeting would be any
safer than using the native application and I'm not doing international
diplomatic negotiations anyway. All I can say is that it's been working
flawlessly for me for 4 or 5 years and has been improving quite a bit as
time goes by. If your need is to attend Zoom meetings, you can't just
use Jitsi instead. And I have always wondered, if Jitsi or any other
app were used as much by as many people as Zoom has been, how many
security flaws would be found in them. The Wikipedia article on Jitsi
says that due to it's hosting on AWS Jitsi is not GDPR compliant. Do
you or anyone have alternative that can be said with confidence to be
better?
Don MacDougall
As I have previously said, the issue of zoom was previously discussed on
this list, and, people interested in considering zoom, should have
searched the list archive, and, found previous discussions relating to zoom.
Is there a way to search for "zoom" in some debian-user archive?
I found https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/ ? But I am way to lazy
Laziness doe not achieve vigilance, and therefore, does not achieve
privacy and security, and, permits usage of a person's computer, to
instigate DDOS attacks and other uses of a computer for malicious
activities, instigating attacks against hospitals, other emergency
services, and other government departments, including law enforcement
and the military.
Do you perform updates on your computers? Do you monitor the state of
your computers - free hard drive space, RAM usage, downloads and
uploads, that you have not authorised?
Hmmm.
It is true, I do not search through my WireShark logs of my network's Internet
activity. ; )
But I do diligently apply security updates.
I do review logs, Internet usage, and use other security methods.
(At least once each decade, honest)
to search through all those pages looking to see if at any time some had made a
comment about Zoom that is likely to be outdated by this time. Is there a way
to do one single search through all of these archives?
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2020 [Jan] [Feb] [Mar] [Apr] [May] [Jun] [Jul] [Aug] [Sep] [Oct] [Nov]
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2025 [Jan]
I found a list by year and month. I found those list
One report that was previously cited in previous discussions of zoom on
this list, that should have been read by people recommending zoom, is
the report at
https://www.theregister.com/2023/0/15/software_freedom_conservancy_zoom/
But, if you want to record what goes on in the bathrooms of your houses,
I fail to understand? How does using Zoom in a web browser on your desktop computer in
your private study some how affect the privacy of " the bathrooms of your
houses" ?
Does any bedroom of your house, have an en-suite bathroom? Does the
bedroom have a "laptop" computer in it, at any time?
Some people, in addition to having computers on desks in bedrooms (such
as students), also, sit on their beds, and use "laptop" computers, or
tablet PC's, or cellphones.
People do not need to be sitting in a bath, holding a desktop computer,
or a "laptop" computer, or, sitting on a toilet, or, standing in a
shower, or, undressing (or dressing), to be able to e visible to a
camera connected to zoom.
and, the sex lives and nude imagery of your wives and daughters, and,
broadcast them on the World Wide web, then, sure, go ahead and use zoom,
The allusion is to do with the malignant privacy breaches by zoom,
allowing zoom staff to monitor whatever was in view of cameras on
systems on which zoom is installed - surveillance of wherever a computer
is located, that has a camera connected to zoom. Some people apparently
have computers in their bedrooms, with the computers having zoom
installed, or, otherwise, access to zoom. So, if people are always fully
clothed, and, do not engage in an y intimate activities, and, do not
have people present, including themselves, wherever a computer is
located, that has zoom installed, or, can otherwise access zoom, they
probably do not need to worry about what zoom is going to do to them.
I have read that video recorded from Samsung smart TVs were viewed by some
employees, and such videos made their way on the dark web for other's amusement.
A problem with "smart" tv's (I do not know that "smart" tv's have
cameras), is that they can be used to monitor such things as what
television programmes and channels, a person watches, and when, and,
when a person is present and watching television. It is like "smart
home" stuff, and, the "IoT", especially, "security" cameras for
households, where the stuff goes up into the clouds, to be breached,
allowing burglars to know when people are at home, and/or asleep, and,
apart from enabling the cloud people to watch people in their homes,
allows home invasion people, the same access to information, enabling
rapists, apart from robbers, to know when is best to strike.
After problems that we have had in this household, with security, and,
in considering getting "security" cameras installed, with the uploading
of everything, to the clouds, for the pleasure of the nasties in the
clouds, I decided that getting the insecurity cameras, is too dangerous,
and, we would be better of, instead, using booby traps and other weaponry.
I had not read about issues with Zoom.
We used Zoom in our work environment, it was password protected, no bombing (we
knew who was or was not supposed to be in a meeting).
Ah, yes, but, I trust that you were aware that zoom was recording, for
its own use, your communications?
I am concerned that I may have missed some important articles on what Zoom was
doing?
Did you read the article about why zoom was regarded as not safe to use?
With AI, that it was being used to intercept people's communications, to
train the zoom AI, so that zoom could set up fake representations of
zoom users, to impersonate them, like deepfake porn.
But I am at a loss of how on a technical level the above concerns could be
realised? Unless you have only one room in your house, and everyone walks
around naked all the time.
I am curious about "upskirt videos" and cars? How is that even possible?
It was to do with he placement of cameras in Tesla cars, and, the
unauthorised use of them,
I had not heard about such issues, if you have any links to such reported
issues, please send me some (on list or privately).
Single example of abuse by Tesla and breaching privacy through cameras -
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/
Do a search using the terms
tesla cars cameras upskirt
I have not been able to identify any camera's that would be at a position to
record such video. But then, maybe that depends on how short the skirt was. My
family tend to wear jeans, not skirts, so I not something I have considered.
Thanks for raising this issue, such issues had not entered my thoughts before.
Would this also an issue for police mobile phone usage camera's ? I believe some such
images have captured "unique" seating arrangements and attire people wear (or
not wear) while travelling in a car.
That has already been reported, in relation to the use of the cameras
for catching people driving while playing with cellphones and other
amusements in motor vehicles, where women wear indiscreetly short
skirts, or drive "bottomless" or topless,or without underwear, and, with
people engaging in sex acts while driving. Apparently, the cameras for
catching people playing with electronic devices while driving, are
effective at catching people doing other things, also.
like some Australian school principals
remotely switching on webcams on students' laptop computers so that the
principals could watch their students in their bedrooms.
Yes, I have heard of this issue, and monitored it. I don't think I kept links,
sadly.
We have a strict policy in our house. No phones in toilets or bathrooms, be
fully clothed when have using or having a camera enabled electronic device
(computer, tablet, phone) powered on, and when not fully clothed all phone
cameras are covered (e.g. in a container). I understand that even when smart
phones are powered off, the occasionally turn themselves back on, to record
where the phone is currently located. Not sure what else they record.
Yes, we too are paranoid.
In Australia, paranoia is a necessity.
I have no idea of whether you remember it, but, some years ago, federal
law in Australia, was changed, to give ASIO (for people outside
Australia, ASIO is the Australian equivalent to the CIA, and, effective
at smashing hotel rooms (that happen to be the wrong ones, not the
intended ones) ) unrestricted authority to change the content on a
person's computer and then deny that they had done it, which now means
that any evidence of what is found on a person's computer - where it be
sexually related, or, plans to blow up the Australian space academy, or,
plans to assassinate the leader of the Gumby Party, are likely to be
falsified, and, so, no evidence of content that is found on a person's
computer, is valid, for convicting the person for having the content on
the computer. It does not mean that being so falsely convicted, will not
occur - it just means that the evidence and the conviction, are not
safe", to use an appropriate term as used by the judiciary.
to your hearts content. Such is the nature of zoom, like the pedo guy's
cars, that have been reported to have cameras specially placed in them,
to record and transmit back to the car manufacturer's headquarters, such
material as upskirt videos and photographs, for the pleasure of the
world's richest pervert.
Who needs or wants privacy and security, anyway?
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............
