What you need to know
- Zoom has rolled out new security features to help prevent meeting disruptions.
- Hosts and co-hosts can now temporarily pause a meeting and remove a disruptive participant.
- Meeting participants will now be able to report a disruptive user directly from the Zoom client.
Video-conferencing software Zoom saw a massive surge in popularity this year, as a large number of people started working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. While Zoom has addressed several security issues brought to light by researchers earlier in the year, "Zoombombing" continues to be a major issue. Zoom has now announced two new security features that make it easier to remove and report Zoombombers.
The new security enhancements make it possible for hosts and co-hosts to temporarily pause their meeting and get rid of a disruptive participant. To remove a Zoombomber from your meeting, you'll have to click on the new "Suspend Participant Activities" option under the security icon. When you click on the new option, all video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotation, screen sharing, and recording during that time will be stopped. The feature is enabled by default for both free and paid users. Hosts and co-hosts can also share details and include a screenshot while reporting a user.
In addition to hosts and co-hosts, meeting participants can also now report a disruptive user from the Zoom client. You can find the option to report users by clicking the top-left Security badge when you're in a meeting. However, account owners and admins will first have to enable reporting capabilities for non-hosts in web settings.
Zoom says both the new features are now available to users on the Zoom desktop clients for Mac, PC, Linux, and mobile apps. It plans to extend support to the Zoom web client and VDI later this year.
