An app that gained maximum attention during the pandemic, Zoom has seen both- more downloads and more controversy. It is a video conferencing app that allows multiple users to join a ‘meeting’ held by the host and have virtual conversations. For businesses and education institutes this app has worked remarkably well.
The company has now announced that its paid customers will be able to choose the data center from where their calls are routed. This will become live April 18th onwards. For added security, the app will include “opt-in” and “opt-out” options, however, users won’t be able to opt-out of their default region.
Zoom also said that data of free users outside of China will never be routed through China.
This announcement comes after certain claims against Zoom surfaced a few weeks back that they zoom calls have been mistakenly been routing through China servers for non-China users. This was found by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab report and acknowledged by Zoom.
At the moment, Zoom has data centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, India, Australia, China, Latin America, and Japan/ Hong Kong. The company is now working on a 90-day feature freeze as they wish to fix the app’s issues before they roll out more features.
The app was also claimed to have been hacked by cybercriminals as obscene photographs displayed on the screen. As more people are now on it, there are more mistakes being brought to light which the makers now have to thoroughly examine. An absence of data privacy laws also creates more concerns and fear among users.