For those who have made the transition to working from home in the last few weeks, it's likely you’ve encountered the video conferencing website Zoom as it rises in popularity among workplaces.
Or if not, perhaps you’ve used Zoom to video call with family or friends to stay connected while also staying at home, or you’re a student whose class is using Zoom to deliver educational supports while school is currently out.
Whatever the reason, the video conferencing software has blossomed during the spread of self-isolation, and there’s a few reasons why.
The largest draw to Zoom is that it offers video conferencing, online meetings, and typed chat on a free-to-use platform that is available to anyone — no sign-up required, unless you are the host.
Chat attendees don’t need to sign up with the website to join a call, and they can log in to a chat from their computer, smartphone, or tablet with no restraints. It’s as simple as clicking a link sent to them from the chat’s host.
This is a feature that sets Zoom apart from other free video conferencing giants like Skype, which works best through the Skype application.
Another draw for many is that unlike other video chat companies like Skype, Zoom allows as many as 100 different attendees to join one video call for up to 40 minutes — making it easy to include an entire staff or class on one call, for example.
Creating a Zoom meeting is as easy as heading to their website and clicking “Host a meeting” at the top of the page, and the system generates an invite to send to all attendees.
People are also able to decide whether to join by video or by audio and can toggle those settings on and off during the call, and they can even add a virtual background to cover up their real background.
For the most part, this is what makes it so appealing — it’s easily accessible to everyone, it’s free, and it can include as many people on a call as you want with little to no hassle.
While the newly-popular video conferencing system offers a great alternative to device-specific competitors like FaceTime, Zoom does have some issues that may be of concern to users.
Most of the features that make Zoom easy to use are also the features that create a few privacy and security risks that come with using the product. Zoom’s easy invite-based system uses randomly generated access codes and passwords, which anyone can guess and potentially join a call they aren’t supposed to be on — known as “Zoombombing.”
An easy way to make a Zoom meeting more secure to something like this is to set a password for the meeting, which is an option the host can choose when creating the meeting. Hosts can also enable a "waiting room" feature, which means any newcomers joining the meeting must be approved by the host before they have access.
Additionally, Zoom calls aren’t end-to-end encrypted which means that the personal data collected during calls — such as IP address and device details — could be leaked or provided to third-party companies without the user's knowledge.
Since the privacy issues have been pointed out, however, Zoom developers have publicly announced their intent to improve their privacy measures over the next few months.
For those with concerns about data privacy, Zoom might not be the best place to host that company-wide meeting — especially if the topic is sensitive — but that’s not to say the service isn’t worth using.
Zoom remains the easiest free video chatting service to connect a large amount of people on the same call, without hitting up against feature paywalls or device incompatibility issues.
Some other free alternatives to using Zoom include Skype’s new Meet Now feature, Cisco Webex, Jitsi Meet, Google Hangouts, Houseparty, and even Facebook Messenger’s video call option, to name a few.
