Security News > 2020 > March > Yeah, that Zoom app you're trusting with work chatter? It lives with 'vampires feeding on the blood of human data'

As the global coronavirus pandemic pushes the popularity of videoconferencing app Zoom to new heights, one web veteran has sounded the alarm over its "Creepily chummy" relationship with tracking-based advertisers.

Doc Searls, co-author of the influential internet marketing book The Cluetrain Manifesto last century, today warned [cached] Zoom not only has the right to extract data from its users and their meetings, it can work with Google and other ad networks to turn this personal information into targeted ads that follow them across the web.

"Searls, a former Harvard Berkman Fellow, said netizens are likely unaware their information could be harvested from their Zoom accounts and video conferences for advertising and tracking across the internet:"A person whose personal data is being shed on Zoom doesn't know that's happening because Zoom doesn't tell them.

"Nobody goes to Zoom for an 'advertising experience,' personalized or not. And nobody wants ads aimed at their eyeballs elsewhere on the 'net by third parties using personal information leaked out through Zoom.".

"Zoom doesn't need to be in the advertising business, least of all in the part of it that lives like a vampire off the blood of human data," Searls continued.

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/27/doc_searls_zoom_privacy/