Zoom Sued For Unauthorized Sharing of Data with Facebook

Zoom Video Communications, an American remote conferencing services company, is currently facing a Call Action Lawsuit due to illegal disclosing of personal data to Facebook. 

The lawsuit was filed on Monday, March 30, in San Jose Federal Court by Robert Cullen arguing that the company violated California’s data protection law. The claimant indicated that Zoom did not properly ask the user’s consent in transferring their personal data from Zoom to Facebook.

The Complaint

According to the complaint, Zoom’s privacy policy didn’t explain to their users that their app contains certain code that exposes information to other third party sites such as Facebook. “Zoom’s wholly inadequate program design and security measures have resulted, and will continue to result, in unauthorized disclosure of its users’ personal information,” Cullen added.

During the analysis of the network traffic of  Zoom iOS App, Motherboard found that when opened the app sent data about the user’s device such as the model, the time zone and city they are connecting from, the phone carrier they are using, and a unique advertiser identifier created by the user’s device.

Motherboard, a multiplatform, multimedia publication, relying on long-form reporting, in-depth blogging, and video and film production informed Zoom regarding the result of the analysis. The company then sent a statement confirming the result. They immediately implemented an app update to remove the code that sends out the data.

However, “Zoom appears to have taken no action to block any of the prior versions of the Zoom App from operating. Thus, unless users affirmatively update their Zoom App, they likely will continue to unknowingly send unauthorized personal information to Facebook, and perhaps other third parties. Zoom could have forced all iOS users to update to the new Zoom App to continue using Zoom but appears to have chosen not to,” the lawsuit implies.

It also argues that Zoom has not ensured that Facebook has deleted the data, either. The lawsuit also claims that Zoom participated in unlawful and unfair business practices, and violated the California Constitution. 

Case continues

The complainant is pursuing to represent other users and asked for a declaration that the company violated California’s Consumer Privacy Act. He’s also seeking damages under the act and punitive damages.

Zoom didn’t give their comment yet on the issue.