How To Prevent Zoom-bombing

Some Basic Steps You Can Take To Protect Your Online Meeting

The threat of COVID-19 meant we had to take Ladies Of Code (LoC) London events online or not meet at all. I had heard of Zoom-bombing and wanted to reduce the risk to our members.

Friends of mine told how they had attended other online meetups on Zoom, only to have the screen share hijacked by a troll broadcasting graphic hardcore porn. A week after we had our first online event, another group’s large meeting was Zoom-bombed, leaving attendees traumatised.

It’s important to note that Zoom is not the only platform that bad actors can target. We considered a range of different ways to take our meetups online. (That’s a whole other blog post.) Zoom is the go-to app for thousands of communities because it has many great features. Its rapid rise in popularity, combined with the fact countless users aren’t changing the default settings, has meant that it’s the go-to app for many trolls too.

Therefore, before we ran our first event, I did some research into how Zoom-bombing happens and what we can do to prevent it. We then put in place a number of measures which, so far, have meant that we have not had any trouble from bad actors.