Zoom makes U-turn on encryption, will now encrypt calls for all users from July

Zoom recently announced that it would be bringing end-to-end encryption for video calls for its paid users. Now, after some controversy surrounding this decision, the company revealed plans to roll E2EE out to all users, those on the free plan included.

In a blog post, Zoom said that all users would get the feature and it will come as an “optional advanced add-on”. It comes after Zoom previously said that it wanted to prevent illegal use of the platform so would not introduced E2EE for free users.

We have identified a path forward that balances the legitimate right of all users to privacy and the safety of users on our platform. This will enable us to offer E2EE as an advanced add-on feature for all of our users around the globe – free and paid

The feature will launch in a beta form in July, but all Zoom users will continue using AES 256 GCM encryption by default. End-to-end encryption will also be optional, with administrators gaining the ability to enable or disable it for a call. This is because it “limits some meeting functionality” such as PSTN phone lines.

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Ben Ward

Senior Editor, discussing everything Apple and supporting other writers and members of Apple TLD's team of volunteers.

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