Zoom’s now in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, and more
Your good tech news digest, by way of the DGiT Daily newsletter, for Wednesday, April 1. No April Fooling here!
1. Zoom? Not so much.
Zoom has become the darling of the working-from-home/lockdown world but that popularity is coming at a cost. I mentioned yesterday how there’s been rapid backlash against the company. But people like Basecamp founder David Heinemeier Hansson (@DHH) have jumped way further, calling the organization “fundamentally corrupt.”
- The tech world has long used Zoom because it has strong video tech and it makes video conferencing work.
- Former default conferencing software Skype became a UI nightmare of cutesy and weird, borderline unusable, BlueJeans was often used by corporates, but Zoom was cool. It worked well. It was easy to join, no login required.
- Now the likes of the UK cabinet met on Zoom yesterday. Howard Stern is broadcasting on SiriusXM with Zoom. Everyone’s on Zoom.
- But Zoom is hilariously insecure! UK PM Boris Johnson’s screenshot tweet yesterday revealed the Zoom meeting ID of a meeting, allowing people to dial in. (The meeting was password-protected, but just a password away is a meeting of the top level of government).
And the entire infosec world smells blood in the water, ramping up its interest in a product that appears to be amazingly complicated, has plenty of attack surface, and has always played at the edges of what should and shouldn’t be done with software that can be close to malware.
Helpfully, the likes of TechCrunch are also swinging into gear with comprehensive “Maybe we shouldn’t use Zoom after all” pieces: Zoom at your own risk, they say.
- I’d almost forgotten about when Apple had to patch its Macs after Zoom had installed a hidden web server.
- And there’s a much longer list of everything since that time, including privacy issues, New York’s attorney general investigating privacy and data concerns, a lack of end-to-end encryption despite Zoom promising this, Zoombombing, and further leaking personal information including emails and photos.
- To be fair, it’s not just Zoom: Houseparty is being called a “privacy trojan horse” that’s “able to basically track your every move” on your phone. Not that TikTok privacy/safety concerns have stopped people using TikTok.
- But Zoom isn’t an app, or a fun new startup. $ZM (not $ZOOM) is a $40 billion public company, not a new thing with limited resources.
- Alternatives are being discussed. FaceTime remains close to the gold standard but only on Apple devices and not really for conferencing, while WhatsApp group calls work well, but only up to four people and both solutions require some kind of login or identification.
- Anyway, the best news so far is that Zoom doesn’t appear to have adopted a pattern of denial or being overly defensive. This may still play out but it hasn’t happened, yet.
- If Zoom pivots to offer transparency, apologizes, and switches from a focus on growth to security over the next period, that will help.
- Until then, clever but close-to-malicious style approaches from the company will be under scrutiny.
2. Apple buys Dark Sky for its hyperlocal weather, and immediately announces removal from Android. Tricky move, because Dark Sky’s weather API powers a lot of other apps, too. But at least for Dark Sky’s founders, Apple didn’t just copy it and pretend Dark Sky didn’t exist. Anyway, here’s 15 of the best weather apps and weather widgets for Android (Android Authority).
3. FCC will require phone carriers to authenticate calls by June 2021: less robocalls via STIR/SHAKEN protocols (Engadget).
4. Teardown of Huawei flagship phone finds US parts despite blacklisting, Huawei says everything is by the book, and the Department of Commerce isn’t saying anything more (Ars Technica).
5. Spotify’s standalone Kids app is now available in the US (Engadget).
6. How an anti ad-blocker works: Reverse-engineering BlockAdBlock, using Wayback Machine (xyz2.dev).
7. In big business land, Xerox is dropping its $30 billion hostile takeover bid for HP (CNBC).
8. This COVID-19 Humble Bundle gives 100% to charity and the list of stuff you get is great. Award-winning Hollow Knight is just about worth the $30/28 EUR, plus Undertale, Into The Breach, ebooks, and so more. (Oh, btw, Hollow Knight is on Xbox Game Pass) (humblebundle.com)
9. Why you should order your pizza ‘uncut’: the story we need (Lifehacker).
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