When the world retreated towards video teleconferencing during the onset of the pandemic, user privacy took another harrowing turn. Opting in to Zoom’s services means that many users are giving the company insight into audio data generated in work meetings or calls with friends and family. In fact, video-conferencing apps like Zoom are so hungry for user data, they may even collect data after users mute their microphones.
A pre-print study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that ran tests on a range of videoconferencing applications found that even after hitting mute, companies often still retained access to a given user’s microphone. Some of the applications tested include Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, and Discord.
