Zoom will now let you temporarily pause meetings so you can kick out “Zoombombers” or disruptive individuals, the company announced in a blog post.
As Zoom usage skyrocketed during the pandemic, pranksters and hackers found ways to invade Zoom calls and display shocking videos and disruptive content, a practice that has become known as “Zoombombing.” With Zoom’s new security feature, you’ll be able to suspend a meeting to block bad content from being shown and also report the Zoombomber to Zoom.
To suspend a meeting, click the Security icon while on a call and then click “Suspend Participant Activities.” When you do, all video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotations, screen sharing, and recording will be suspended and all breakout rooms will end, which should shut down the Zoombomber’s activity. From there, Zoom will ask the host if they want to report a user, and if they do, that user will be ejected from the meeting and Zoom’s security team will be notified.
Zoom says the new feature is being enabled by default for all free and paid users and is available on the Zoom clients for Mac, PC, and Linux, as well as Zoom’s mobile apps. I should note that I wasn’t able to see the feature on Zoom on my work MacBook Pro, but I suspect that’s due to my IT settings.
In April, Zoom announced a 90-day feature freeze to fix privacy and security issues on the platform that came to light following the massive surge in users relying on it during the pandemic. Many of Zoom’s resulting improvements, such as turning waiting rooms on by default for basic, single-license Pro, and education accounts, could help make it harder for Zoombombers to infiltrate meetings.
