“Zoom’s lax security allowed a ‘known offender’ to commandeer a web-based Bible study class and ‘Zoombomb’ its participants with ‘traumatizing’ pornography, a San Francisco church alleged in a proposed class action filed Wednesday in California federal court.”
Wow.
Law360 reports a story that is a major yikes moment for the troubled video-conferencing pandemic darling app Zoom:
Saint Paulus Lutheran Church and the Bible study group leader Heddi N. Cundle hit Zoom Video Communications Inc. with a suit claiming the company failed to take necessary steps to keep an intruder from hacking into a May 6 Bible study class and causing pornographic content to play “on all participants’ computers in a full-screen mode and with loud audio.”
“Ms. Cundle and the other participants were forced to view various footages of adults performing sexual acts with each other and on infants and on young children,” the church said in the complaint. “The depravity of the video footages was beyond description. Ms. Cundle and the other participants were traumatized and deeply disturbed.”
The church and Cundle said they reached out to Zoom about the incident, but the company did nothing in response, despite its admission that the person had similarly hacked other meetings.
“It is baffling, to say the least, how Zoom failed to protect Saint Paulus’s Bible study class from a ‘serial offender’ who has been ‘reported multiple times to the authorities,'” the church said.
The lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of anyone who used Zoom “during the applicable limitations period,” makes claims of negligence, breach of implied contract and unjust enrichment as well as violations of California consumer protection and privacy laws.
Read more:
Zoom Sued After Bible Study Derailed By ‘Traumatizing’ Porn
[law360.com, via @JuliaArciga]