California-based communications technology firm Zoom has started alerting its users in India about its updated terms of service.
Zoom’s updated privacy statement, globally announced in June, includes an opt-out option for its users from sharing data to third parties.
“Zoom customers and users decide when a content is recorded and whether to share it with third-party apps or others,” Lynn Haaland, chief compliance, ethics and privacy officer, said in a statement. The updated privacy statement also clarifies Zoom’s use of automated tools to protect people’s safety.
The development comes at a time the web conferencing major, which became a global phenomenon during the Covid pandemic, reportedly agreed to pay $85 million and bolster its security practices to settle a lawsuit which claimed it violated users’ privacy rights by sharing personal data with Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, and let hackers disrupt Zoom meetings in a practice called Zoombombing.
Zoom’s usage ballooned unexpectedly in the pandemic - from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to 300 million daily meeting participants in April 2020, as per disclosure in the company’s annual report.
