Porn hack prompts S.F. church to sue
Zoom, the teleconferencing giant that has replaced inperson meetings for millions of Americans, was sued Wednesday by a 153yearold San Francisco church whose Bible study class last week was Zoombombed with pornographic images — by someone Zoom described as a “known serial offender,” according to the lawsuit.
The incident with Saint Paulus Lutheran Church underscored Zoom’s elevation of “profits and revenue over data protection and user security,” said lawyers for the church and its classroom administrator, Heddi Cundle.
The proposed classaction suit seeks damages not only for Cundle and the eight others who attended the class, but also for the millions of Zoom users nationwide who allegedly are exposed to hacking and harassment due to the company’s failings. It was filed in federal court in San Jose, where Zoom is based.
There was no immediate comment from Zoom. The company, as noted in the suit, has declared on its website that its security protections “exceed industry standards” and that privacy is its “highest priority.”
Zoom, as the suit also noted, is booming: Its U.S. users soared from 10 million in December to 200 million in March.
It was also in March, lawyers for the church said, that the FBI issued a warning that cited multiple reports of Zoom conferences “being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language.”
The Polk Street church, open since 1867, holds a weekly twohour Bible study class whose participants are mostly senior citizens, the suit said. It started holding them remotely on Zoom, rather than in person, in late March because of the coronavirus pandemic, for a monthly $14.99 fee.
On May 6, the suit said, 42 minutes after the class started at noon, the screens were suddenly occupied by a female intruder with loudnoise videos showing adults having sex with each other and with children and infants. No one could minimize the images, close the screen or use features that should have allowed them to refuse the view or eject the intruder, the suit said. Cundle and the students logged off, then logged on, only to see the intruder return. The class was then called off.
Zoom responded by saying the intruder was a “known serial offender” who had shown the same video and had been “reported multiple times to the authorities,” the suit said. The company said it has now blocked her from future meetings.
But when Cundle contacted Zoom’s chief ethics and security officers, neither offered any help in protecting the class against future invasions, the suit said. It said the company’s eventual response consisted of “empty words, in a blogposted ‘apology.’ ”
Similar incidents have been reported elsewhere, the suit said. In addition to the FBI warning, lawyers said recent media investigations have found that Zoom “uses datamining tools to collect users’ personal information and shares it with third parties without users’ consent.”