Zoom wants to settle for $85 million in a lawsuit in the United States. The class action lawsuit was filed because Zoom claimed to encrypt video calls end-to-end when they didn’t.
In the collective lawsuit against Zoom, users demanded compensation for the company lying about providing end-to-end encryption, passing data to Facebook and Google without permission, and the security vulnerabilities that allowed people to break into Zoom meetings. . Zoom has a proposal submitted to comply with the court.
In a statement to Ars Technica, Zoom does not admit that the company was wrong by lying about end-to-end encryption. Zoom only says that “the security and privacy of its users is still the highest priority”.
According to the prosecutors, Zoom did encrypt the video calls, but it did not involve end-to-end encryption. The keys were generated by Zoom’s servers and not on the user’s device. Therefore, Zoom cannot speak of end-to-end encryption according to the prosecutors.
If the settlement is accepted, Zoom users in the United States will be able to claim damages. Both paid users and free users can receive compensation. Free US users who used Zoom between March 30, 2016 and July 30, 2021 can get up to $15. Paying users can get 15 percent back on the money they spent on Zoom subscriptions during this period.
Zoom has been offering end-to-end encryption since late last year. Initially, only paying customers were given access to end-to-end encryption of conversations. After much criticism, Zoom decided to give both paid and free users of the service access to end-to-end encryption of their video calls.