During lockdown when people worked remotely and used Zoom to stay in touch with their coworkers a new issue arose – Zoom bombing. This is where an uninvited person joins your video call over Zoom without permission.
An article published on the website How to Geek in April 2020 described the main cause of this: “The problem is how people handle public Zoom meeting links. These links are shared thousands of times between clients, friends, colleagues, classmates, and so on. Careless handling of them can result in a Zoom meeting being open to public access. Then, anyone who finds the link can join an in-progress meeting” (Gunnell).
Unauthorized persons who hijack Zoom meetings have been known to make offensive comments, throw racial slurs and bully people. There are many ways to prevent this from happening. If you must use links without a password don’t post them where they can be easily accessible or found by Google. In the Zoom settings menu you can disable the “Embed Password in Meeting Link for One-Click Join” setting and make it a requirement to have a password to join the meeting. Screen sharing can be disabled except for the host so inappropriate content is not shown. The “Remote Control” feature should be disabled if you don’t want other participants to control your computer. If you don’t want files to be shared you can disable the “File Transfer” option. For a full list of ways to prevent Zoom Bombing read the here.
Zoom bombing can also refer to the unexpected appearance of individual(s) in a video who weren’t supposed to be there. Prior to Zoom calls, the old term was video bombing. One humorous example of Zoom Bombing happened during lockdown during a live interview with the BBC. On May 15, 2021 The Indy100 website published an article titled “Jon Ashworth’s daughter is the latest kid to Zoom-bomb a TV interview.” The shadow health secretary was giving a live interview when his daughter made a cameo appearance. The interview went viral and appeared on Twitter.
Many of us working remotely are using Zoom for business, meetings, interviews and classes. One mom from New Hampshire zoom bombed her kids’ classes while wearing embarrassing costumes, such as a bear suit and an old man, and posted selfies on her local New Hampshire Facebook page.
Social Media Trends as of May 9, 2022
Facebook #zoombombing: 3,100 people are posting about this
Instagram #zoombombing: 2,685 posts
TikTok #zoombombing: 76.3 million views
Google Trends: zoombombing didn’t register until March 2020 when the pandemic arrived in the United States. The popularity of the term reached its peak during the week of March 29, 2020 which coincided with lockdown.
Sources:
Guardian News. “Shadow health secretary’s daughters gatecrash live TV interview.” You Tube. April 12, 2020. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qir6bD7Y7mM.
Gunnell, Marshall. “What Is Zoombombing, and How Can You Stop It?.” How to Geek. April 10, 2020. URL: https://www.howtogeek.com/667183/what-is-zoombombing-and-how-can-you-stop-it/.
Hourigan, Tom. “A new victim of child Zoom-crashing tonight: shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth.” Twitter. May 14, 2021. URL: https://twitter.com/TomHourigan/status/1393268954274140162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7
Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1393268954274140162%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indy100.com%2F
politics%2Fjonathan-ashworth-mp-daughter-zoom-b1848031.
Lexicon images. “zoombombing concept represented by wooden letter tiles on a wooden table with glasses and a book” image. Adobe.com. File no: 344298530.
WMUR-TV. “NH mom Zoom-bombs kids’ meetings.” You Tube. May 14, 2020. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQJTyb3DHuE.