Teams across the world have been working from home and using video conferencing much more as a means of staying in touch.

Unfortunately, several reports claimed saboteurs - aka trolls - disrupted Zoom meetings and classes as part of a trend dubbed Zoom bombing. It was first reported in 2020, when Zoom was at its height and is now much less of a problem.

Here’s everything you need to know, including how to prevent your Zoom event from being crashed.

What is Zoom bombing?

Zoom is a videoconferencing app that many businesses and universities use to hold meetings or classes when in-person sessions aren’t possible. You can learn more about the software, which is available for desktops and mobile devices in both free and paid forms, from our guidehere.

Anyway, people have been using Zoom’s screen-sharing feature to inundate other viewers with graphic videos, porn, and other NSFW content from across the internet. It became a trend afterWFH Happy Hour- a public Zoom call hosted by reporter Casey Newton and investor Hunter Walk - was bombarded with crude imagery. A troll joined their call and screen-shared Two Girls, One Cup.

What’s worse, the perpetrator kept re-entering the call under a new name, forcing the hosts to end the call. The problem stemmed from this: anyone who publicly shared a Zoom meeting link, especially where it could be found by online trolls, like on Twitter, needed to change the screensharing option before the call started in order to protect their Zoom call from being disrupted or crashed by others.

The problem of Zoom bombing was also made worse after it was revealed that an automated tool could be used to scrape and discover over 2,400 unprotected Zoom meetings a day.

How to stop Zoom bombing

When you share a Zoom meeting link on social media or other public forums, it becomes public, and anyone can join with that link. However, Zoom hosts can disable the screen sharing option in their settings (or the Admin controls of a call), thus preventing participants from taking control of the meeting and subjecting everyone watching to inappropriate content.

Here’s how to shore up a Zoom call.

Generate a random meeting ID

First, avoid using your Personal Meeting ID to host public events. It’s basically one continuous meeting, so if you don’t want random people crashing your call, generate a random meeting ID.You can learn about meeting IDs hereand how to generate a random one in the video above.

Manage screen sharing

Never give up control of your screen. If you do not want random people in your public event taking control of the screen and sharing content, restrict their ability - either before the meeting or during the meeting in the host control bar.

Manage participants: More tips and tricks

Only allow signed-in users to join

Only allow signed-in users to join. From the Zoom web portal, navigate toSettings,and enable “Only authenticated users can join meetings”.

Lock the meeting

When you lock a Zoom meeting, no new participants can join, even if they have the meeting ID and password (if you have required one). In the meeting, click Participants at the bottom of your Zoom window. In the Participants pop-up, click the button that says Lock Meeting.

Require a password

You don’t always have to share a meeting link; you can generate a random Meeting ID when scheduling your event and require a password to join. Then, you can share that Meeting ID on social media, but then only send the password to join via a direct message.

Gohereto learn more about how to set a password.

Remove disruptive participants

From that Participants menu, you can select a participant’s name and choose “Remove” to kick them out of the meeting.

Put people on hold or mute them

You can put all meeting participants on hold, temporarily disabling video and audio connections. Just click on someone’s video thumbnail and select Start Attendee On Hold to activate this feature. Click Take Off Hold in the Participants list when you want them to rejoin. Hosts can also mute/unmute individual participants or all of them at once. Try enabling Mute Upon Entry in your settings - learn howhere.

Disable video

Turn off someone’s video to block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate video. Gohereto learn how.

Try waiting room

For public events, Zoom recommends trying its Waiting Room feature to stop your guests from joining a meeting until you’re ready. As a host, you can customise Waiting Room settings for additional control, and you can even personalise the message people see when they wait.

Gohereto learn about how waiting rooms work.

Zoom security updates

Zoom recognised that there was a problem and changed the default settings to address it. Now new meetings, instant meetings, and those you join with an ID are password protected by default. Even Zoom meetings that have been scheduled for a while will now have a password.

Joining a new meeting also puts you into a virtual waiting room first where the host will now need to let you in. The company says this will be the default setting for Free Basic and Single Pro users but all other users are encouraged to make use of these settings as well.

These changes prevent unwelcome visitors from disrupting your meetings.

Want to know more?

Check out Zoom’sZoom bombing blog postfor more tips and tricks.