Zoom faces litigation after a church located in San Francisco, United States of America (USA) sued the video calling application company for an alleged streaming of pornographic content during their Bible Study service.
The church alleges that 42 minutes into the class, their computer screens were “hijacked” and “control buttons disabled” while pornographic video was streamed.
The said Bible Study was held on May 6 by Saint Paulus Lutheran Church – one of the oldest churches in the city. The teaching class held via Zoom was attended by plenty senior citizens.
Zoom gained lots of popularity during this coronavirus pandemic as virtual gatherings became imperative.
The lawsuit states that: “The footages were sick and sickening — portraying adults engaging in sexual acts with each other and performing sexual acts on infants and children, in addition to physically abusing them.”
The church’s frustration against Zoom was compounded when video calling application company admitted the hacker was a “known serial offender” who had been reported many times to the authorities.”
In the suit, the plaintiffs accuse Zoom of “prioritizing profit and revenue over data protection and user security” and are seeking damages for negligence, invasion of privacy and violations of California state consumer protection and privacy statutes among other things.
“The Church filed this lawsuit only after Zoom refused to take its concerns seriously,” Mark Molumphy, one of the church’s lawyers, told CNN in an email statement.
Molumphy, a partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy One, said:
“One would think that Zoom — having been informed of the Church’s horrific experience would’ve done everything possible to acknowledge and fix the security vulnerabilities of its platform. Instead, the Church was basically ignored, and Zoom likely hoped that the Church would just go away. However, it is not going away, and instead, courageously stepping up to try to change Zoom’s practices and make sure this doesn’t happen again to anyone else.”
The lawsuit also added that when students tried ending the session and starting over, the hacker attacked again.
Zoom disputed the church’s claims that it did not immediately take action following the incident.
“We were deeply upset to hear about this incident, and our hearts go out to those impacted by this horrific event. Words cannot express how strongly we condemn such behavior,” a spokesperson for Zoom said in an email statement to CNN.
The spokesperson referred users to a series of information that highlighted the security enhancements Zoom has made in recent months. The blog posts reveal security tips such as making meeting passwords a default and updating its encryption standard.
“Our hearts go out to those impacted. On the same day we learned of this incident, we identified the offender, took action to block their access to the platform and reported them to the relevant authorities,” said Zoom spokesperson.
Zoom thereby encourage users to report any incidents of this kind either to them Zoom or directly to law enforcement authorities for pertinent actions and sanctions
It also spurred all meeting hosts to take advantage of Zoom’s recently updated security features and follow other best practices. Users are advised not to broadly share meeting identities and passwords online.
