If your personal meeting ID is leaked to the web, Zoom bombers are free to harass you with calls whenever they please.

This screen will appear whenever you schedule a new meeting in Zoom. When creating a meeting, you can use your personal ID or generate a random one, and you should always generate a random meeting ID. Never use your personal meeting IDĮach Zoom user has a personal meeting ID-think of it as your Zoom phone number. In Figure A you can see the meeting setup screen from the desktop version of Zoom with all the appropriate options toggled on.įigure A 1. These steps won’t completely eliminate the chance that a bad actor crashes your Zoom call, but they’ll go a long way toward making sure the host has control over what each and every person can do in their meeting. Zoom has built-in tools that can prevent Zoom bombings from occurring, and they’re all remarkably easy to enable when creating a new meeting.

SEE: The tech pro’s guide to video conferencing (TechRepublic download) It isn’t necessarily harmful, but it’s definitely obnoxious.Įven with all of Zoom’s security issues, it can’t be blamed entirely for the Zoom bombing trend–internet trolls have been using publicly posted meeting links, guessing meeting IDs, and using personal meeting IDs posted online as ways to join meetings uninvited. Video conferencing app Zoom has had a meteoric rise in users due to the coronavirus outbreak, and with that rise in users has come security woes and an annoying new trend known as “ Zoom bombing.” Zoom bombing is, in essence, crashing a digital meeting and doing things like screaming obscenities, broadcasting pornography, and otherwise interrupting people’s attempts to talk to coworkers, family, and friends.