Zoom Video Communications agreed to pay $85 million during a preliminary lawsuit settlement filed Saturday afternoon. The deal is in response to a category action lawsuit over users’ concerns over the corporate allegedly having shared personal data with Facebook (FB), Google and LinkedIn moreover as instances of “zoombombing,” when an unwanted hacker joins a call.
The FBI issued a warning against “zoombombing” in March 2020, citing samples of users entering meetings or virtual classrooms to shout profanities and share pornography. The FBI urged victims of “teleconference hijacking” to report any incidents to the agency.
The video conferencing company has agreed to quite a dozen “major changes to its practices, designed to enhance meeting security, bolster privacy disclosures, and safeguard consumer data,” per the settlement documents.
These changes are expected to incorporate “in-meeting notifications to create it easier for users to grasp who can see, save, and share Zoom users’ information” and “alerting users when a gathering host or another participant uses a third-party application during a gathering.”
“The privacy and security of our users are top priorities for Zoom, and that we take seriously the trust our users place in us,” a spokesperson for the corporate told CNN Business. “We are happy with the advancements we’ve got made to our platform, and appearance forward to continuing to innovate with privacy and security at the forefront,” the spokesperson added.
Paid subscribers within the lawsuit lawsuit are eligible for 15% refunds on their Zoom core subscriptions, or $25 — whichever amount is larger — and other Zoom users might be eligible for up to $15, consistent with the settlement.
Zoom collected approximately $1.3 billion in subscriptions from the category action participants who procured a subscription, in step with settlement documents.
The deal requires approval from US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, to be finalized.