With the surge in the use of Zoom to conduct meetings, have birthday parties, just chat, have virtual churches and have webinars, ZoomBombing has become of of the most searched newer term on the internet.

ZoomBombing refers to an uninvited guest who joins a meeting at random and creates problems by talking inappropriately or sharing inappropriate pictures or doodling inappropriately. The result could be some harmless annoyance or even a sexually explicit content shown to kids.

The person usually gets the meeting ID by random guessing or by getting a copy of the invite that is posted in public. There are entire forums and groups that share this info.

Here are some simple tips to prevent zoombombers from entering your meeting and creating problems.

1. Update Zoom to the latest version. Check everyday and ensure you are updated as Zoom is trying ways to prevent hacking and ZoomBombing.

2. Do not use your personal meeting ID as far as possible. This is a constant and once guessed or shared can be easily use by miscreants.

3. Use a password. This simple measure means that people cannot guess your meeting id and access your meeting. Also send the password as a separate email or message from the meeting ID. Change the password for each session of a recurring meeting.

4. Enable waiting room, so that you can check on each person before they enter in. Ensure you inform all invitees to come in a few minutes early so this doesn’t delay the start of the meeting.

5. Disable sharing especially screen sharing. Enable it only when needed and hopefully only by the host.

6. Disable annotations for the meetings you are hosting. This can help stop miscreants from doodling on the screen. If sharing is essential use the option of “Show who is annotating” so that you can catch the trouble maker.

7. Lock the meeting when everyone has come in. So no strangers can slip in later.

8. Have a co-host to ensure you have help to vet and check in attendees and catch people asap.

That’s a few quick tips to prevent ZoomBombing in your meetings.

Preventing hacking and data piracy is a different ballgame and Zoom id constantly updating its software and app to try and make this better. You will soon have a feature where you can choose how your data is routed.