Zoombombing

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Template:FanHateInfobox Zoombombing is a way of raiding Zoom conferences or meeting calls, popularized in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. It originated from the software's low security measures and has been referenced in similar app calls. This activity has been documented in the 2021 book Racist Zoombombing by Hanah Stiverson, Kyle Lindsey, and Lisa Nakamura.

Why It Should Be Zoombombed[edit | edit source]

  1. First and foremost, not only does this disrupt regular remote learning calls, but this type of behavior is disruptive and there are even videos of other people raiding online classes.[1]
    • In additional to all of that, a teenager was arrested for this, as well, no joke.[2]
  2. The users who do this type of activity mostly contribute to literally nothing but send inappropriate content in the meeting and sometimes spurt out profanity in the chat wall. There was even a time that a church meeting on Zoom was hacked by people adding hate speech, porn, and/or other irrelevant content.
  3. Most of the time, the zoombombing mostly involves insertion of material that is either lewd, obscene, sexist, transphobic, heterophobic, homophobic, racist, and among other disruptive activities:
    • In fact, one zoombombing incident involved people adding swastikas in another literal church meeting.[3]
      • Not only is this extremely offensive especially to Holocaust survivors, but this type of act is illegal since this type of act involves in computer crimes, and to add insult to injury, people have spammed Hitler memes in one particular event.[4][5]
  4. Some of these raids are organized by actual YouTubers wanting to have some fun and attention.[6]
  5. In one incident, a meeting of Dallas ISD trustees was interrupted with raiders yelling the N word several times and typing "dumb monkeys" in the chat, followed by another raider typing "useless n****rs" at least 20 times.[7]
  6. This type of behavior has even made Zoom users get frustrated to the point where they just give up.[8]

Tips[edit | edit source]

  1. Have your meetings be password-protected. This is a #1 top priority and must be maintained in order to have a safe Zoom meeting without worrying about anything bad happening. Don't disable waiting room unless you can trust who has access to the meeting ID.
  2. Do not give out any Zoom links to anyone as they can use those links and bomb the meeting using that link. Only share the Zoom meeting link to anyone that you trust such as a student in your class.
  3. Be careful of who you invite to your Zoom meetings at your discretion, as there is a chance that you could be inviting very dangerous people who are most likely going to bomb it.
  4. Don't give the Zoom-raiders a reaction, and kick them out immediately if you spot them.

Videos[edit | edit source]

Examples of zoombombing[edit | edit source]

News reports about zoombombing[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]