Video conferencing service Zoom announced that it will also provide end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for free members to increase communication confidentiality. It is a plan to expand strong encryption benefits to all members, moving away from the recent announcement that it will only provide paid members.
Zoom has gathered opinions from human rights organizations, encryption experts, and government officials since the announcement of the end-to-end encryption design on May 22. As a result, the company revealed a new E2EE design on GitHub while unveiling a legitimate right to protect the privacy of all users and a way to ensure a balance of user safety on the platform.
However, free users need to provide information for identity verification, such as verifying their phone number thanks to text messages. This is because it can reduce the mass creation of accounts that will be abused by identity verification. The initial beta version for this target will be available from July. The encryption technology used is basically 256-bit AES. It remains unclear whether different encryption technologies will be available as options.
With the epidemic of Corona 19, the demand for working from home and online classes increases, and Zoom is becoming part of the infrastructure for this. As in response to such a rapid increase in users, security vulnerabilities have become easier to expose, but stability can be enhanced by such measures.
Meanwhile, at the request of the Chinese government, Zum caused controversy by suspending accounts that held events in memory of victims of the Tiananmen incident. At that time, it promised to develop a technology that could block participants by country. In the future, interest in how and how far Zum will protect communication secrets is expected to increase. Related information can be found here .