Zoom recently changed the default setting for screen sharing from ‘Anyone can share’ to ‘Only Host can share’. This was done in response to reports of people joining public Zoom meetings and posting inappropriate material, or “Zoombombing”. So far, this has not been an issue for us, since we don’t usually publish our meeting links to the general public. Zoom has several tools that can help us to secure our meetings.
If sharing has been an issue for you, please make sure that you are logging in correctly, because if you have host status, sharing should not be a problem for you. As the host, you need to sign into your Zoom account, not just click a link or join a meeting:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362033-Getting-Started-on-Windows-and-Mac
Once you are logged in as host, you can control who can share, who can chat; you can also lock the meeting so no one else can join, or remove people, if they are not supposed to be there or they become disruptive:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362603-Host-and-Co-Host-Controls-in-a-Meeting
Another option is to require a meeting password, so even if someone finds an active link, they will not be able to join the meeting. This must be done when you schedule a meeting. Remember: Do not send the password and the link together-always send them in separately:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360033559832-Meeting-and-Webinar-Passwords-
Always use a unique meeting ID when you can. If a meeting is recurring, you can set it up that way, but don’t just use that one link for everything. The longer a link is in use, the more chance it has of falling into the wrong hands:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362413-Scheduling-meetings
This list is not exhaustive. These are some simple things we can do to keep our meetings private. Most of the issues you may have read about are the result of a huge number of new users who do not know how to use the tools Zoom provides.
We strongly recommend that you log in to Zoom on the web at https://zoom.us and click the ‘Settings’ tab to see all of the tools available to you. We also recommend https://support.zoom.us for detailed information on everything Zoom. As always, you can reach out to us as well at shphelp@shp.rutgers.edu.
If you would like to read more about how Zoom is responding to all this, here are two blog posts that may interest you:
Eric S. Yuan, Founder and CEO, Zoom
https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/01/a-message-to-our-users/
The Facts Around Zoom and Encryption for Meetings/Webinars:
https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/01/facts-around-zoom-encryption-for-meetings-webinars/