Are you looking into the Zoom lawsuit privacy action that came out in 2021? We often cover lawsuit news, and Zoom has been on our radar!
Zoom was also recently in the news for suing Ringcentral over a breach of contract.
This article however will focus on the privacy class action lawsuit against Zoom.
Zoom has been ordered to pay $85 million (in United States dollars) to subscribers, so pay attention! You might be entitled to compensation, although don’t get your hopes up.
Subscribers to Zoom can either get $25 USD or a partial refund, which comes out to fifteen percent. The settlement is relativity small compared to the other large class-action lawsuits against corporations.
Judge Lucy Koh mentioned a law in the United States called the Communications Decency Act. Apparently, this law is the reason for the smaller settlement. It offered Zoom some protection.
In addition to the financial side of the settlement, Zoom has also been forced to improve its cybersecurity operations.
The class-action lawsuit had claimed that subscribers’ privacy rights had been violated by the lack of cybersecurity at Zoom. Hackers were able to do something called “Zoombombing.”
Zoombombing is when a hacker gets into your private video meeting, and normally does something disruptive for shock value.
We wanted to provide a video example of Zoombombing, but it seems that many of the examples are too explicit to put online.
Zoom Lawsuit 2021
Most of the time, someone logs into a video call, and makes racial insults, or makes threats against whoever is speaking.
At other times, the hacker logs on naked, normally wearing a mask. There have been times when the video shows someone having sex.
Sometimes the hacker shares their screen, and they are looking at PornHub.
There doesn’t appear to be any type of financial reason for the hack. It’s just to cause chaos for fun.
When Zoom agreed to settle, they refused to admit that they had done anything wrong. They agreed to offer $25 and to work hard at preventing hacking in the future.
The law firm that handled the class action is seeking over twenty million in legal fees from the court (who has to approve lawyer compensation with class actions.)
The Reason For The Hack
The reason that Zoom said the hacking happened is that the company grew too fast due to COVID-19.
The company was so busy at the beginning of the pandemic growing their company that they had little time for security testing. All focus was on operations.
They had grown from around 82K customers to around 500K in a relatively short period of time.
The value of the company also quickly grew. Zoom benefited greatly from the pandemic (financially.)
However, since there have been signs of a COVID-19 recovery, the company shares have been relatively flat.
This lawsuit shows how important it is to have a penetration testing team (cybersecurity) and good corporate lawyers.
Because Zoom had strong user agreements (that everyone must agree to when signing up) the settlement was much lower.
If you ever need a lawyer to review your privacy policy in Canada, the United States, or China, contact us. We have business lawyers in these places that we can connect you with.
If you are interested in starting a class action, you should see our article on the subject.
If you want compensation from the Zoom settlement, reach out to the law firm. Could someone contact us with the name of the law firm? That would be helpful! We will add it to this article.
Author: Alistair Vigier is the CEO of ClearWay Law
This article could have been longer. But it was still interesting.