Avoiding Zoombombing

Zoobombing is a phenomenon that occurs when someone gets into a Zoom meeting and posts pornography to the attendees and/or starts making inappropriate comments to the group that can include racial slurs, threats, or sexual content. See the post from the New York Times about Zoombombing. This type of intrusion can happen easily if a host has posted a meeting link on Facebook or other social media. This is happening to classrooms on Zoom as well as conferences and even smaller meetings. I am by no means a Zoom expert and I would love to know what more people have to say about this topic, but here are a few things you can do that might help:

1.  Don't post meeting links on social media or public platforms if it can be avoided. You never know who might join the meeting.

2. Make it mandatory that people join the meeting with a password.

3. To prevent other people from sharing inappropriate images during a meeting, click on the arrow next to Share Screen and go to Advanced Sharing Options.

Then select Only Host so that only the host can share his/her screen.

4. To prevent unwanted visitors from making inappropriate comments, go to Manage Participants. Mute EVERYONE. This is also helpful in large meetings when people forget to mute themselves. Then you can decide if you want to allow people to unmute themselves to speak to the group or not. If everyone is muted, they may need to raise their hand to share.

5. Zoom lists other precautions such as using the Waiting Room, Lock Meeting and Disable Private Chat features HERE.

I'm sure other people will have more to share on this topic as well as more advanced advice.