Carmen Gomez DIARY

Carmen Gomez

Nothing comes free in life; not really!

A sign of how a pandemic is good for business. Designer face masks are being launched together with perfumed sanitising gels. Also you must have heard the phrase often enough “if it’s free it’s for me.”

For that reason people have turned to the app Zoom in their millions; Literally 200 million of them at present; particularly since its launch very conveniently coincided with lockdown; where it was greeted with enthusiasm as it could both be used for work or leisure. The app`s main selling point is that it offers free 40 minute conference calls with up to 100 attendees and its easy to use, as people don’t need a login to access a meeting. However researchers have found that the free app might actually come with the cost of giving up their personal data; with the National Security agency identifying a series of issues including a flaw which left Mac users vulnerable to having webcams and microphones hijacked. In fact Zoom’s chief executive has apologised for security and privacy issues which he says, they never envisaged. There are fears that it is sending user data to face book, wrongly claiming that the app had end to end encryption, and allowing meeting hosts to track attendees.

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08-07-2020 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR