Skip to main content

Zoom iOS app will no longer send data to Facebook following backlash

As millions of people switch to working from home due to the global coronavirus pandemic, video conferencing software like Zoom has become suddenly indispensable and far more widely-used than before. However, concerns have been raised and the security of some conferencing tools and the implications they could have for users’ privacy.

An investigation by Motherboard last week revealed that Zoom’s iOS app was sending some data about users to Facebook, which was not made clear in the app’s privacy policy. This happened even if Zoom users did not have a Facebook account. Zoom would connect to Facebook’s Graph API and share information such as the device model being used, the location a user was connecting from, and advertising identification data.

After the investigation was published and a torrent of bad publicity was unleashed, Zoom has hurried to update its iOS app and to stop it from sending data to Facebook. “Zoom takes its users’ privacy extremely seriously,” Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan wrote in a blog post. “We originally implemented the ‘Login with Facebook’ feature using the Facebook SDK for iOS (Software Development Kit) in order to provide our users with another convenient way to access our platform. However, we were made aware on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, that the Facebook SDK was collecting device information unnecessary for us to provide our services.

“Our customers’ privacy is incredibly important to us, and therefore we decided to remove the Facebook SDK in our iOS client and have reconfigured the feature so that users will still be able to log in with Facebook via their browser.”

Users need to update the app to the latest version, made available on March 27, to remove the code that sent data to Facebook. Although Zoom emphasized that the data sent to Facebook did not include names, meeting attendees, or notes, it did acknowledge that it included a considerable amount of information about users’ devices, carriers, applications, and IP addresses.

“We sincerely apologize for the concern this has caused, and remain firmly committed to the protection of our users’ privacy,” Zoom’s blog post concluded. “We are reviewing our process and protocols for implementing these features in the future to ensure this does not happen again.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Facebook starts rolling out Dark Mode feature to iOS devices
Facebook Russia

Facebook's Dark Mode has started rolling out to iOS devices, more than a month after the feature went live for the social network's desktop version.

Facebook confirmed with SocialMediaToday that Dark Mode is now available for the social network's iOS app, but currently only for "a small percentage of users globally."

Read more
Facebook’s Messenger Rooms goes global to take on Zoom
facebooks messenger rooms goes global to take on zoom facebook

Facebook has launched Messenger Rooms globally.

The rollout of its Zoom-like videoconferencing service follows a limited release at the end of last month.

Read more
Spotify, Venmo, and other iOS apps went down because of a Facebook SDK
mark zuckerberg speaking in front of giant digital lock

The new Facebook software development kit wreaked havoc on a number of iOS apps for over an hour on Wednesday -- causing them to crash for hundreds of thousands of users.

According to users on Twitter and GitHub, the new software development kit, or SDK, caused a range of apps to crash  -- including major apps like Venmo, Waze, Spotify, and more. The SDK essentially allows those apps to connect to Facebook and use some of its features, like allowing users to log in using their Facebook account. Thankfully, the issue seems to have now been fixed.

Read more