Zoom Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Security, Privacy Breaches

Investor Michael Drieu is leading a class action lawsuit against Zoom Video Communications Inc. alleging the California company’s video conferencing app has security bugs.

The complaint was filed on Tuesday (April 7) in Northern California’s U.S. District Court, according to a report by Yahoo Finance, referencing Bloomberg News. The firm faces allegations that shortcomings in the app’s software allows access to hackers and disclose personal information to third parties, including Facebook, without telling its users.

The Bloomberg report said the lawsuit comes as shareholders say these security loopholes arise as the number of app users continues to grow in the wake of COVID-19 that has much of the country working from home.

As a result of the security flaws, users are getting “Zoombombed,” users say. That’s where uninvited people get access to a video conference and bother participants, the report said.

Companies and agencies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla Inc., as well as New York City’s Department of Education, have banned the app, the report said.

The report said Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has acknowledged the security and privacy breaches and apologized. In a blog post a week ago, the company said had fallen short of expectations over privacy and security.

Yuan noted the number of daily meeting participants across Zoom’s services has reached 200 million, up from 10 million at the close of 2019.

The lawsuit follows an earlier complaint by Robert Cullen one week before in the same court.

“Zoom, however, has failed to properly safeguard the personal information of the increasing millions of users of its software application and video conferencing platform,” the lawsuit said. “Upon installing or upon each opening of the Zoom App, Zoom collects the personal information of its users and discloses, without adequate notice or authorization, this personal information to third parties … invading the privacy of millions of users.”

Last year, Zoom surpassed Lyft as the most valuable of all the tech companies to go public in 2019.