After schools were closed in Singapore on account of the coronavirus outbreak on Wednesday, classes switched to home-based learning through video conferencing apps. Singapore has now stopped teachers from using Zoom following "very serious events" that occurred during the lessons, according to its education ministry.
During a geography lesson involving teenage girls, unidentified individuals entered the stream, making inappropriate remarks and displaying obscene images on the screen. Aaron Loh, Divisional Director, Educational Technology Division at Ministry of Education, Singapore, remarked:
“These are very serious incidents. MOE (Ministry of Education) is currently investigating both breaches and will lodge a police report if warranted. As a precautionary measure, our teachers will suspend their use of Zoom until these security issues are ironed out.”
He further said that teachers are being told to use the security features deployed in the video conferencing app, such as using a secure sign-in method, and not widely sharing the meeting link. In a bid to avoid "zoombombing," Zoom recently announced that virtual meeting rooms would be turned on by default.
Zoom has been facing backlash after several security vulnerabilities were reported within the app. Eric Yuan, the company"s CEO, later announced that Zoom was enacting a 90-day feature freeze to fix the current security issues with the service. Until then, no new features would be released.
Source: Reuters