Zoom, which has suddenly become very popular as millions of Americans work from home or take classes during the shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, may be collecting your personal data from your video conference sessions to share with advertisers This is according to privacy advocates who are paying close attention to Zoom's legal language

Before you look up how to remove Zoom or try one of the several Zoom alternatives, Zoom must have read the bad press; on March 29, Zoom rewrote its privacy policy, removing the unfavorable-sounding part and adding the preface "We do not sell your personal data " and added the preface, "We do not sell your personal data

In a related move, Zoom reduced the amount of personal data it sends to Facebook as part of its iOS app's "Log in with Facebook" feature

Zoom is "eerily chummy with the tracking-based advertising business," warned noted technology writer David "Doc" Searls in a series of blog posts this weekend

"Zoom is in the ad business, and it's one of the worst of the worst

I would like to quote some of Zoom's privacy policies regarding the sharing of personal information with marketers, which Searls used to explain his concerns, but Zoom removed them all yesterday

"Zoom does not need to get into the advertising business Especially in the business of vampires who live off the blood of human data," Searls wrote

"If Zoom needs more money, it should either charge more for its services or offer less for free"

Similarly, Consumer Reports, in its warning about Zoom, "Zoom Calls Aren't as Private as You May Think," published last week, states: "Zoom collects users' personal information and uses it for advertising, marketing, Zoom does not provide many details about how it collects users' personal information and how it is used for advertising, marketing, or other business purposes"

Zoom's Chief Legal Officer, Aparna Bawa, refuted the allegations in the preface to Zoom's privacy policy, which was added yesterday Addressing users directly, she said, "Whether you are a business, a school, or an individual user, we will not sell your data"

"Zoom only collects user data necessary to provide Zoom's services," Bawa wrote For example, we collect information such as a user's IP address, operating system, and device details in order to provide the best Zoom experience, no matter where or how a user joins from"

One of Searls and Consumer Reports' biggest concerns was that people hosting Zoom meetings could record the sessions for later replay

While this is not a particularly unusual feature, as it is useful for those who missed the meeting or need to review what was said, Consumer Reports claims that the red light that pops up on the user's screen during recording is small and easily missed

"For people who use Zoom to access telemedicine or mental health services, or to share information they do not want disclosed to others, knowing that a recording is being made and how that recording is stored is important information Bill Fitzgerald, a privacy researcher at Consumer Reports, said

In the preface to Zoom's privacy policy, Bawa writes:" If the host is recording the meeting, he or she will issue both audio and visual warnings when a participant joins the meeting and the participant can leave the meeting"

On Friday (March 27), Zoom updated its iOS app following a Vice article that analyzed the app and discovered it was sending iPhone model, carrier, time zone, city, and ad ID to Facebook

"Many apps use Facebook's software development kit (SDK) as a way to more easily implement functionality into their apps, with the effect of sending information to Facebook," wrote Vice's Joseph Cox on March 26 'But Zoom users may not realize it's happening, or that when they use one product, they may be providing data to another service "

Zoom itself was unaware that the Facebook SDK was "collecting unnecessary device information to provide our services," wrote Eric S Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, in a blog post

"We decided to remove the Facebook SDK (software development kit) in our iOS client and reconfigured the functionality to allow users to log in with Facebook via their browser," Yuan wrote