Is Zoom a Chinese app? Netizens wonder it has not been banned

New Delhi, June 30: The Indian government banned 59 Chinese apps being used in India, including TikTok. However many wondered why the government had not banned Zoom, the video calling app.

Many on the social media asked why the government did not ban Zoom. The question now is whether Zoom is a Chinese app. Let us get you the details.

Zoom became prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitated contact and communication while maintaining social distancing from within their homes.

Is Zoom a Chinese app? The answer is no. Zoom or Zoom Communication Inc is not a Chinese company. In fact it was found by Chinese-American billionaire, Eric Yuan. It is headquartered in San Jose, California. Yuan on the other hand holds an American citizenship.

Yuan had earlier clarified to the media that Zoom was a fully American app, which was found and headquartered in the US. "Recently, questions have been raised about Zoom and China. At first, this seemed to stem from a temporary misconfiguration in our global data centre routing that we fixed," Yuan said.

MHA advisory on Zoom:

• Prevent unauthorised entry in the conference room
• Prevent an authorised participant to carry out malicious on
  the terminals of other in the conference.
• Avoid DOS attack by restricting users through passwords
  and access grant.

Most of the settings can be done by login into users zoom account at website, or installed application at PC/Laptop/Phone and also during conduct of conference. However certain settings are possible through certain mode/channel only. For example, lock meeting can be enabled by administrator only when the meeting has started. This documents explains in details all the security configuration through website, App and through console during the conduct of conference.

Objective of security configurations:

1. Setting new user ID and password for each meeting
2. Enabling waiting Room, so that every user can enter only
   when host conducting meeting admits him
3. Disabling join before host
4. Allowing Screen Sharing by host Only
5. Disabling "Allow removed participants to re-join"
6. Restricting/disabling file transfer option (if not required)
7. Locking meeting, once all attendees have joined
8. Restricting the recording feature
9. To end meeting (and not just leave, if you are administrator

Some tips:

Don't use your personal meeting Id (PMI) to host event, instead use randomly generated meeting IDs for each event.

Don't share your link on public platform, instead share randomly generated meeting id and password for every new meeting session/schedule. It makes it much secure and difficult to leak.

If you are admin, remember to end meeting, dont just leave meeting.

Sign out of your account when not in use