Thousands of private Zoom videos are online for anyone to watch

Thousands of private Zoom videos are online for anyone to watch
Uh, not good.Image: Vicky Leta / mashable
By Jack Morse2020-04-03 18:24:39 UTC

Your boss may not be the only one secretly replaying your Zoom meetings. 


Thousands of recorded Zoom meetings are floating around the open web — available for anyone to watch. The exposed video calls include private business discussions, casual friend conversations, therapy sessions, and, yes, nudity, and many appear to have been made public by mistake. 


The news, reported by the Washington Post, is yet another privacy blow in a long line of privacy blows to Zoom. At issue is the file-naming convention used by Zoom to label recorded meetings. It is unique enough that security researcher Patrick Jackson, who alerted the Post to the issue, found 15,000 examples when he ran a scan of unsecured cloud storage. 


WATCH: Zoom’s newfound popularity is being exploited by hackers during coronavirus pandemic





But you don't even need to look that hard, as a quick search for the Zoom file name on YouTube, Google, and Vimeo by Mashable revealed scores and scores of recorded calls. 


One such video, clearly not intended to be uploaded, included what appeared to be a therapist speaking to his patient. The two discussed the patient's thoughts about self harm, among other incredibly sensitive topics. It was posted online Friday.


Now, it's important to note that these meetings were uploaded — perhaps mistakenly, in some cases ..

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