The lockdown situation and people working from home has led to video conferencing becoming critical for the ones in the corporate sector to remain in contact with their counterparts. Zoom is the app that most people seem to have adopted quite rapidly to hold video conferences.
Another app that has become popular is Houseparty, a social video sharing app that permits you to chat with friends on video and have fun.
However, both these apps have come in for some criticism over the lack of security in them. Zoom was reported to have a bug that passes on details of any app user, the moment he or she opens to app, to Facebook. This is because the app uses a software development kit of Facebook and has certain agreements with it. However, the issue is Zoom ends up sending Facebook, data related to those who are not Facebook members. This will definitely amount to invading their privacy. The kind of details being shared with Facebook by Zoom includes the person’s details like the device they are using to access the app, the city they live in and the carrier they are hooked on to and so on. There’s also an advertiser identifier which Facebook can use for targeted advertising at a later date.
There are also reports that Zoom doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which means that Zoom can access video and audio of users.
In the case of Houseparty, users have lodged complaints that the app has a vulnerability that permits hacking and their personal information like emails, online backing details etc. can be stolen by the hacker. Interestingly, the company that owns the app has challenged this and said it is ready to offer a $ 1 million bounty for those who can prove that its app is open for hacking. Apparently, no proof of this complaint has been furnished so far.
The way most apps operate is they spell out a clear privacy policy and get the users to agree to the terms of use clauses. There they do mention that the users’ data may be collected etc. How this data is used or with whom it is shared remains a mystery. The European General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are quite stringent and if someone takes up the Houseparty issue to the authorities there, it could spell some trouble for the app.
Houseparty has had a larger gain proportionately than Zoom. The daily downloads of the app were 651,694 on March 24, 2020. It used to be just 24,795 on February 15, 2020.