Zoom has announced that it will make end-to-end encryption (E2EE) available to both paying and non-paying users. The move was made in response to pressure given from privacy and human rights advocates after the company announced that it will only provide the aforementioned security feature to paid users earlier this month.
The platform experienced high usage due to the current situation, where a majority of users resort to video conferencing for both work and leisure purposes while practicing self-isolation. Despite its popularity among users, Zoom initially received some flak in regards to poor security issues which was eventually addressed upon in recent updates.
Zoom said that it will begin the early E2EE beta for free users in July 2020. Non-paid subscribers will participate in a one-time process that will prompt them for additional information such as verifying a phone number via a text message. Company CEO Eric Yuan added that E2EE will be an optional feature as it limits some meeting functionalities, and mentioned that account administrators will have the ability to enable and disable it at account and group levels.
Additionally, the company also released the updated E2EE design on GitHub as an advanced add-on feature to all of its users. You can find the link to the source code below.
(Source: Zoom [Blog] [GitHub] via Arstechnica / Wired | Images: Reuters)
