Zoom Amends Terms of Service – Others to Follow?

On Sunday the media reported that Zoom quietly changed it’s terms of service – last March.

The operative changes includes these words:

In a detailed perusal of the newly updated terms, two sections – 10.2 and 10.4 – stand out for their broad-ranging implications on how Zoom is permitted to utilize user data. These sections establish Zoom’s rights to compile and utilize “Service Generated Data,” which is any telemetry data, product usage data, diagnostic data, and similar content or data that Zoom collects in connection with users’ use of their services or software.

https://stackdiary.com/zoom-terms-now-allow-training-ai-on-user-content-with-no-opt-out/

The amended TOS gave Zoom the right to use all user “service generated data” any way it wants, including for training artificial intelligence models.

The reaction to the media report was swift and lethal.

Harvard anthro prof Biella Coleman shared the story on Twitter with 48,000 of her closest friends with the tag line “Time to retire @Zoom”.

On Monday Zoom made a minor adjustment to the new policy. They added  “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”

Zoom has been a bad child in the past and is now operating under an FTC consent order which dictates how they must improve their security and privacy practices. It is not clear how the FTC will respond to this.

But the addition doesn’t say they won’t use metadata.

It also doesn’t say they won’t use transcripts.

Or meeting participant lists.

Or a whole variety of other data.

For any purpose that they want.

Or sell it to anyone.

With no time limit.

And then you have to consider what they mean by consent. Does it mean that you use the product? Or have agreed to the terms of service that no one reads? You get the idea.

Will others quietly follow in Zoom’s footsteps and hope they don’t get caught? After all, very few people actually read the terms of service.

Credit: The Record

by