Have you heard of Zoom Bombing? It’s basically when unwanted guests invade your online meeting and disturb or destroy, for example by behaving completely inappropriately. In this video you will learn 15 ideas for you to choose from, which you may want to try out to stop your zoom meetings from being bombed.
We’ve been using the online conference software zoom for our live online training for years now, and it is a great tool, as more and more people are reaching for online conference software like zoom to engage with others online, a new phenomena developed called zoom bombing. This is basically when unwanted guests invade your online meeting and disturb or destroy, for example by behaving completely inappropriately, showing pictures, making awful insulting , sharing files with inappropriate content and so on. It is just wrong. Of course there is also the danger of cyber espionage especially if you are talking about sensitive or confidential topics in your meetings and you don’t want people listening in or taking a look at your slides.
Firstly if you are zoom bomber, please stop doing this. You probably don’t care, but come on, it is a very difficult time for just about everybody. People are connecting online to try and keep their businesses going, to help or teach others, or to engage socially with people they care about. You are not helping, you are hurting people, causing upset, damaging lives, making social proximity even more difficult with this particular brand of cyber bullying so please please use your cyber talents and put your energy into something more constructive..
Anyway, here are 15 ideas for you to choose from, which you may want to try out to stop your zoom meetings from being bombed
- Create a unique meeting ID when setting up your meeting, especially for large or public meetings, if in doubt, do not use your personal meeting ID or PMI of your zoom account. The more you use the same ID; the higher the likelihood someone unwanted will get hold of it and join your meeting for the wrong reasons
- Never share a meeting ID in a screenshot on Social Media. You are inviting people who may have the wrong intentions to try and join your meeting. This is of course especially true for recurring meetings and for your PMI.
- Never place links to zoom meeting invitations with the meeting ID in your Social Media posts for the same reasons
- Use the password function. Make the password available only to those you have invited, and of course never place a password in a social media link or in an email distribution list to your extended community
- Use the register function. That way everybody who wants to join has to register first. That way you at least have the mail address of everybody who has registered
- Use the waiting room function, which you will find under advanced settings, to screen unwanted guests. If in doubt, look at who is in the waiting room before you admit them. If you don’t recognise them, keep them out.
- Once people are in the meeting, lock the meeting so nobody unwanted can get in
- In your meeting, configure screen sharing to host only so nobody can share their screen but you as a host. This makes it more difficult to take over and show inappropriate images, for example
- Use the mute button. Place participants on mute all from the start and if in doubt, keep control of who you choose to unmute
- Please keep an eye on what people write in the chat to avoid people sneaking in there and writing inappropriate comments
- If you are worried about troublesome guests sharing inappropriate images you can switch off file sharing in chat
- If you are concerned that people will write inappropriate private messages to others you can switch off the private chat function too,
- It’s also possible to disable your unwanted guest’s camera by clicking on the video icon next to their name.
- You can also click on the video of someone and put them on hold if they are disturbing.
- If you don’t recognise someone who has joined and they won’t identify themselves, or if someone behaves inappropriately, remove them by clicking on participants in the bottom panel and then remove. The good news is that if you do remove someone, they can’t re-enter
I can’t guarantee that these ideas will definitely prevent your zoom meetings from being cyber bombed, however they will certainly serve as a deterrent.