Singapore has suspended the use of videoconferencing tool Zoom by teachers, the Singaporean Ministry of Education said yesterday, after “very serious incidents” occurred in the first week of a coronavirus lockdown that has seen schools move to home-based learning.
One of the incidents involved obscene images appearing on screens and strange men making lewd comments during the streaming of a geography lesson with teenage girls, local media reports said.
Zoom Video Communications has been plagued with safety and privacy concerns about its conferencing app which has seen a surge in usage as offices and schools around the world shut to try curb COVID-19 infections.
“These are very serious incidents. [The ministry] is currently investigating both breaches and will lodge a police report if warranted,” Aaron Loh of the ministry’s educational technology division said without detailing the incidents.
“As a precautionary measure, our teachers will suspend their use of Zoom until these security issues are ironed out,” Loh said.
It would further advise teachers on security protocols, such as requiring secure logins and not sharing the meeting link beyond the students in the class, he said.
Taiwan and Germany have already put restrictions on Zoom’s use, while Alphabet’s Google on Wednesday banned the desktop version of Zoom from corporate laptops. The company also faces a class-action lawsuit.
Concerns have grown over its lack of end-to-end encryption of meeting sessions, routing of traffic through China and “zoombombing” when uninvited guests crash meetings.
To address security concerns, Zoom has embarked on a 90-day plan to bolster privacy and security issues, and has also tapped former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos as an adviser.
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