Zoom was secretly mining LinkedIn data and sharing it with some users

It’s becoming pretty clear that Zoom was not ready for the influx of users it received due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The latest issue: the service was secretly collecting LinkedIn data and sharing personal information with certain users in Zoom meetings. 

According to a report from the New York Times, when a user would enter a video conference, Zoom would take that person’s name and email address and run it through an internal system. This system would then match the name and email of the Zoom user with their LinkedIn profile information.

So, why was this such a problem? Zoom would take the LinkedIn profile data and connect it to the user’s Zoom account, allowing other people in the meeting to view the user’s real name, employer, job title, and location. Zoom did this without notifying the user or asking their permission. The video conferencing platform was able to match a user’s real LinkedIn profile with their Zoom name, even if they weren’t using their real name on the platform. Read more...