Zoom agrees to ‘historic’ $85m payout for graphic Zoombombing claims

theguardian.com:

The Covid-19 pandemic brought on a surge of “zoom-bombing” as hackers and pranksters crashed into virtual meetings with abusive messages and imagery. Now, Zoom has agreed to a “historic” payout of $85m as part of a class-action settlement brought by its users, including church groups who said they were left traumatized by the disruptions.

As part of the settlement agreement, Zoom Video Communications, the company behind the teleconference application that grew popular during the pandemic, will pay the $85m to users in cash compensation and also implement reforms to its business practices.

On Thursday, federal judge Laurel Beeler of California granted final approval to the agreement which was first filed in July. The agreement was granted preliminary approval in October.

The settlement stems from 14 class-action complaints filed against the San Jose-based company by users between March and May of 2020, in which they argued that the company violated their privacy and security.

In one incident two years ago, the Saint Paulus Lutheran Church in San Francisco was hosting a bible study class in which most of the participants were senior citizens. However, shortly into the session, “Zoom allowed a ‘known offender’… to ‘Zoombomb’ the class,” according to a federallawsuit that was filed in May 2020.

According to the lawsuit, participants “had their computer screens hijacked and their control buttons disabled while being forced to watch pornographic video footages”, including images of child sex abuse and physical abuse.

The host was unable to remove the hijacker from the meeting room and asked the participants to leave and rejoin the meeting, only for the hijacker to bombard the meeting again with graphic content. The incident left the