Singapore stops teachers using Zoom app after ‘very serious incidents’

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SINGAPORE: Singapore has suspended the usage of video-conferencing device Zoom by academics after “very critical incidents” within the first week of a coronavirus lockdown that has seen colleges transfer to home-based studying.

One incident concerned obscene photographs showing on screens and unusual males making lewd feedback in the course of the streaming of a geography lesson with teenage ladies, media mentioned.

Zoom Video Communications Inc has confronted security and privateness issues over its conferencing app, use of which has surged in workplaces and colleges worldwide after they shut to try to curb virus infections.

“These are very critical incidents,” Aaron Loh of the schooling ministry’s expertise division mentioned on Friday, with out giving particulars.

“The Ministry of Education (MOE) is at present investigating each breaches and can lodge a police report if warranted.

“As a precautionary measure, our academics will droop their use of Zoom till these safety points are ironed out.”

Loh mentioned they ministry would additional advise academics on safety protocols, reminiscent of requiring safe log-ins and never sharing the assembly hyperlink past the scholars within the class.

Zoom was deeply upset to listen to in regards to the incidents and was “dedicated to offering educators with the instruments and assets they want on a secure and safe platform”, the agency’s chief advertising officer, Janine Pelosi, mentioned in an e mail.

It has additionally just lately modified settings for schooling customers to allow digital ready rooms and make sure that solely hosts can share their screens by default, she added.

Taiwan and Germany have already curbed use of Zoom, whereas Alphabet Inc’s Google banned the desktop model from company laptops this week. The firm additionally faces a class-action lawsuit.

Concerns have grown over its lack of end-to-end encryption of assembly classes, routing of visitors by China and “zoombombing”, when uninvited visitors crash conferences.

Officials at Berkeley High School in California mentioned they suspended use of the app after a “bare grownup male utilizing racial slurs” intruded on what the college mentioned was a password-protected assembly on Zoom, in a letter to oldsters seen by Reuters.

To deal with safety issues, Zoom has launched a 90-day plan to bolster privateness and safety points, and has additionally tapped former Facebook safety chief Alex Stamos as an adviser.

The Singapore authorities has additionally been utilizing the device to host media conferences.

The put up Singapore stops academics utilizing Zoom app after ‘very critical incidents’ appeared first on The Himalayan Times.

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