Government warned against using Zoom for meetings

Intelligence agencies have told government ministers not to use the videoconferencing service Zoom for confidential business, due to fears it could be vulnerable to Chinese surveillance.

The cabinet had used Zoom to hold a well-publicised meeting at the end of March, a decision that was defended at the time as necessary in ‘unprecedented circumstances’. Parliament has now been warned by the National Cyber Security Centre that Zoom should only be used for public business, and especially not to use it ‘talk about things detrimental to the interests of China’.

Zoom has risen in popularity during the coronavirus lockdown as a tool for communication for both social and business purposes, and is now used globally by an estimated 300 million people a day. The company behind the video-conferencing software is based in California’s Silicon Valley, but it owns three companies in China that develop its software.