Menu for zoom conferencing app. It rose to popularity after the coronavirus outbreak.

After the shockingly mass spread of the Wuhan born virus known as coronavirus, people were forced into isolation and stay-at-home orders followed. When in public, grabbing essentials, people are forced to stay six feet apart. Social interaction was at a standstill. 

   Zoom, a cloud-based video conferencing  app which can host calls with others changed
that, according to The Telegraph. Users can open chat rooms and have up to 500 people in the room. They can share feed from their WebCams, also according to the Telegraph. Although zoom was created for corporate webinars and meetings, it has served a greater purpose during a time of pearl and urgency for many families, companies and schools. It has kept people in contact and allowed virtual gatherings, parties etc.

   Although Zoom received vast praise, the reliability and security of the app was put into question at times. Security researchers released several reports on newly discovered vulnerabilities including leaked emails and bugs they might have allowed hackers to access WebCams, according to the La Times.

   Trolls have also crashed meetings, displaying inappropriate content and racial slurs, according to the La Times. Zoom clearly underwent a dark period in it’s company but launched new measures to prevent hacking. Generating new meeting ids for every meeting, requesting passwords in order to access meetings and enabling waiting room features to name a few. Caleb De Leon, an 8th grader, supports this standpoint. “I am not afraid of Zoom being hacked because you need a link or code to join a zoom meeting and the only people that can give you that link/code are your teachers…if someone tries to join the zoom meeting that is not from the school the teacher has the option to let them in the meeting or not.” 

   Some students’ opinions differ. Anthony Martinez, another 8th grader, says, “I am afraid of Zoom being hacked because of possible privacy information getting out there or stolen…” Despite differing opinions, Zoom is leading in video conferencing with a whopping 2.22 million active users a month, according to CNBC.

   Zoom has helped many people during these tentative times. It’s rise in popularity started with the outbreak of Covid-19, as well as a tumultuous increase in monthly users. Zoom has connected people and made them forget the worst of this virus.