How to keep your Zoom meetings from being routed through China

There are a lot of options for virtual meetings. I have used most of them. The clear leader right now is Zoom.

Zoom has been prominent in the media recently, and for good reason. They have the top spot in market share among all video conferencing solutions. There have also been some complaints around privacy and security, however. To their credit, Zoom has responded quickly to customer concerns.

Avoiding Zoom Bombing

Thanks to the 2020 quarantine, we have a new term: Zoom Bombing. If you're unaware of what that is, it is people randomly entering Zoom meetings when they weren't invited. Think of it as modern day party crashers.

There was a rash of annoying, unprofessional, and even inappropriate Zoom Bombing. The cause of these virtual meeting crashers was an unsecured meeting. A policy was implemented in the software to require either a waiting room, or a meeting password. For this one, there is nothing you need to do. You are all set.

Privacy

Another issue that people were facing was a privacy issue. If a participant took a screenshot, the Meeting ID was displayed on the screen. As you may guess this is good information for dropping in on meeting participants uninvited. This has since been removed to protect users' meetings.

Security

Meeting security didn't seem important before Quarantine, but now everyone knows how important it is. After you have all of your participants, one quick thing you can do is lock the meeting. Hover your mouse over the bottom part of the screen, and click on Security next to the shield icon. Click Lock Meeting. Boom! No one else can join the meeting.

DATA ROUTING

Keeping your meeting data safe is important. There may be some IP (Intellectual Property) or trade secrets discussed in meetings. The last thing you would want to have happen is for that to get into the wrong hands. For a while some of the Zoom calls were routed through China. Even if all participants are in North America And Europe. Interesting. Zoom has responded to these allegations stating that it was for call quality.

If you are not interested your calls being routed through China datacenters, here is how to fix it.

1. Sign in to your Zoom account
2. Click Account Management
3. Click Account Settings
4. Click In Meeting (Advanced)
5. Scroll down to the item Select data center regions for meetings/webinars hosted by your account
6. Uncheck any datacenters you do not want to include for your calls

Summary

With all the virtual meetings still going on, it is important to know how to keep yourself and your meeting participants safe.