School districts in  New York City, Los Angeles, Nevada, and Utah have banned Zoom after the FBI warned the public about the “hijacking” of Zoom meetings. 

“As large numbers of people turn to video-teleconferencing (VTC) platforms to stay connected in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, reports of VTC hijacking (also called ‘Zoom-bombing’) are emerging nationwide,” FBI said in a press release. “The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language.”

In response, school districts are switching from Zoom to other video conferencing software like Google Hangouts or Microsoft Meeting. 

“I understand why the districts would ban it,” sophomore Ben Hassal said. “While some think that Zoom bombing is funny, others think it’s interfering with their online learning. Zoom bombing is a problem, but we shouldn’t stop using Zoom. One way we can prevent Zoom bombing from happening is for the teachers to only invite their students to join the lesson instead of just putting code out there.”

Zoom has promoted features such as waiting rooms, locking meetings and controlling screen sharing as ways to prevent Zoombombing. 

“We appreciate the scrutiny and questions we have been getting about how the service works, about our infrastructure and capacity, and about our privacy and security policies,” Zoom said in a tweet. “These are the questions that will make Zoom better.”