By Michael Dominguez
Due to the world disaster of COVID-19, social distancing has become the norm for the last few weeks. With that, people can not meet in person causing work and school shutdowns across the country. People need to communicate with each other. Professors and teachers need to meet with students to continue with the rest of the school year. Many websites allow big groups to see each other from the safety of their own homes through a laptop or smartphone. The website that is catching a buzz during these times is Zoom. The makers of Zoom are being sued by the state of California for illegally selling personal data of users and also being able to have control of one’s webcam. Zoom notifications were also being posted on one’s Facebook page without permission, the case is being investigated by New york’s Attorney General Letitia James, the makers of Zoom have denied any wrongdoing of any allegations.
The website’s creators should not be sued because once a person installs the program on their phone or laptop, allows the use of a webcam and agrees to the terms and conditions, the user gives the program access to their devices.
Zoom allows users to have a teleconference through webcam or telephone number call in. Whether it be for big corporations or a student’s stats class, it works for everybody and makes it easier than just sending mass emails or text.
The popularity of Zoom is skyrocketing and seeing a huge jump in its stock for the company as it was up 46% as investors see it as something that is here to stay even after the “Safer-at-Home” order is finally lifted from state to state.
This also goes for social media accounts the pictures and videos posted by the user now belong to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It’s all in the fine print, but no one cares to read it as people just click agree and start chatting with friends on social media.
Phone services like T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon sell the data of phone numbers to telemarketers due to the telemarketing companies and phone companies having deals with each other. It is all agreed to when the consumer signs the deal to their phone company. If a person doesn’t want their info on the web, then it’s simple, don’t be on social media or the internet or don’t carry a phone.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard to do that as we do live in a society where technology and the people who run these companies of your favorite apps are very powerful and backed by very powerful people. This helps these companies get off easy with no punishments or a small fee, but once one company goes down, another is ready to take its spot.