PIL in Supreme Court seeks ban on ‘Zoom’ app

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 20

Raising security and privacy concerns, a PIL in the Supreme Court has sought a direction to the Centre to ban ‘Zoom’ app for both government and private use.

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) — India’s nodal cyber security agency—too had warned about cyber risks involved in using Zoom and many organisations across the world had already banned it, petitioner Harsh Chugh submitted.

Zoom app—which was widely being used for video conferencing—“practices data hoarding and cyber hoarding” which includes mass storage of personal data of its users and stores cloud recordings, instant messages and files, he alleged.

“Zoom is reported to have a bug that can be abused intentionally to leak information of users to third parties. The app has falsely claiming calls are end-to-end encrypted when they are not,” Chugh submitted.

The petitioner demanded that it should be banned in India as well until an appropriate law was put in place.

Continued use of Zoom was “making the users vulnerable and prone to cyber threats”, Chugh said seeking a direction to the Centre to carry out an exhaustive technical study into the security and privacy risks involved.

It posed a security threat and could lead in increase in cyber crimes in India.

Noting that COVID-19 pandemic drastically reshaped the way in which consumers, businesses and schools communicated, Chugh said instead of lending a helping hand to people in need, Zoom violated the privacy of its millions of users by misusing and exploiting their personal information.