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Few days after concerns were raised by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on the secure use of ZOOM App for virtual meetings, a letter petition has been filed in the apex court seeking a ban on the App. The letter petition states that the ZOOM App infringes upon the fundamental right to privacy and hence should be banned.
On April 16, the Cyber Coordination Centre under the MHA issued an advisory stating that ZOOM is not a secure App and that it shall not be used by government officials for official purposes. This advisory raised concern that using the App might lead to malicious attacks on terminals of other users by an unauthorized participant, while the App is in use.
The ZOOM App is being widely used for virtual meetings, online classes, conferences and so on. The petitioners, Advocates Sanpreet Singh Ajmani and Aneesh Sharma, have asserted that the App is not secure and that it does not have end to end encryption. Further, the petition states tat random malicious mails were being received by users of the App and since the App was also being used for conducting online classes, it could be used by unauthorized participants to exploit young children.
Since the usage of the App puts the user’s data at risk, there is also a risk of infringement of the user’s right to privacy and hence the petitioners urged the court to ban the download and use of such a vulnerable App.
On the other hand, Zoom Video Communications India Head Sameer Raje told PTI, “Zoom is in communications with the Ministry of Home Affairs and is focused on providing the information they need to make informed decisions about their policies”. It is also reported that hackers and cyber criminals are targeting the application to infiltrate public and private virtual meetings, a phenomenon called Zoombombing. Companies such as Tesla and Google have already barred its employees from using the App.
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