Best answer: Google Meet and Zoom are both very secure video chatting apps, with each service offering encryption and other security measures to ensure your data is protected. Neither one is perfect or overwhelmingly better than the other, however, with each having its own pros and cons.
- Right in your browser: Google Meet (Free w/ paid plans at Google)
- Everyone's using it: Zoom (Free w/ paid plans at Zoom)
Google Meet has plenty of security measures in place
With a lot of people using video chatting apps more than ever before, it's important to use ones that take your privacy and security seriously — especially when you're using it for work. In this regard, Google Meet has a lot to like.
All data for Meet calls is encrypted between you and Google's servers when joining a video meeting from your web browser or one of the official Google Meet mobile apps. If you join a call from your phone, Google notes that "the audio uses the telephone carrier's network and might not be encrypted."
Any Meet calls that you save to Google Drive are also encrypted, and Google Meet is fully compliant with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards for both Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP). In other words, Google Meet has all of the certifications you'd want to see in a professional chatting app.
Other security highlights for Meet include support for two-factor authentication, Google's Advanced Protection Program, and randomized meeting codes that tend to be harder to guess than Zoom's codes.
But Zoom is equally equipped
Google Meet has an impressive array of security features, but that's not to say that Zoom doesn't have any. In fact, it's every bit as good as Meet in most areas.
Just like Google Meet, Zoom also encrypts all of its calls with 256-bit TLS encryption. Zoom did come under fire for marketing this as "end-to-end encryption," which wasn't entirely true, seeing as how Zoom could still access call data. The company has done a good job of correcting this error, but it did put a bad taste in the mouths of some users.
Zoom supports two-factor authentication for user accounts, notes that it "only stores basic information" for user accounts, and also encrypts the text-based chat feature in meetings. You'll find a bunch of other security-focused in-meeting features, too, such as:
- Waiting rooms for attendees
- Host needs to be present before a meeting can start
- Lock meetings
- Screen share watermarks
- Password protection for meetings
Plenty of privacy to go around
You might have come across some news headlines that have you worried about using Zoom, but at the end of the day, both of these services have plenty of good and bad to go around. Zoom's false claim of end-to-end encryption was a bad look, but Google is a company with a foundation of gathering user information and selling it to companies for advertising purposes.
No online service is 100% foolproof, but as far as we can tell, Google Meet and Zoom both do their best to be as secure and safe as can be.
Virtual meetings, the Google way
Google Meet is a fantastic video chat service, offering seamless integration with your Google account, Google Calendar, and Gmail. It works right in your web browser without the need to download any desktop app, is packed with features, and has plenty of built-in security measures to keep you safe.
The app that took the world by storm
Ever since there's been a big push to work from home, Zoom has emerged as the go-to service for keeping folks connected. It's available on virtually every device, has powerful business-centric features, and a plethora of security/privacy tools that you're bound to like.
