With the rise in popularity of the Zoom video conferencing app, it has been discovered that the app has been secretly sending user data to Facebook without the user’s consent. For those who are uncomfortable with this, the good news is that following Motherboard’s report, the company has since removed the offending code.In a statement made to the publication, the company was quoted as saying, “Zoom takes its users’ privacy extremely seriously. We originally implemented the ‘Login with Facebook’ feature using the Facebook SDK in order to provide our users with another convenient way to access our platform. However, we were recently made aware that the Facebook SDK was collecting unnecessary device data.”
The company also apologized for the oversight and added, “We will be removing the Facebook SDK and reconfiguring the feature so that users will still be able to login with Facebook via their browser.” Motherboard has since downloaded the updated version of Zoom and has confirmed that the app no longer sends data to Facebook upon opening.
Like we said, Zoom has been experiencing a surge in popularity in the past few weeks. This is due to the fact that many people are being forced to work and study from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has resulted in a spike of use in video conferencing apps such as Zoom, which can support as many as 100 users at the same time, making it ideal for both work and study.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Facebook, Privacy and Zoom. Source: vice