We need a setting to allow admins to prohibits bots from entering or attempting to enter a meeting

There are a variety of discussions in the Zoom Community about how to deal with bots, where the onus is on the users to try to stop the bots, one at a time, when they show up.

We need a more comprehensive solution for users who run confidential meetings and (a) cannot run the risk of missing the presence of a bot that may record the meeting and (b) cannot waste precious time dealing with bots in the waiting room or in the meeting when that user is supposed to be running the meeting itself.

We need Zoom to develop bot detection software and create a setting in the meeting settings that allows admins and hosts to designate that bots are prohibited from a particular meeting or all meetings.

This is essential to all kinds of users.  I would think that businesses with IP protection concerns would already be breathing down Zoom’s neck to make this possible, as bots are serious threats to IP security.  In my case, confidentiality is essential for a different reason: personal information is shared in my meetings by people who, as one would in an AA meeting, need to be able to rely on the meeting being treated as confidential by all the human beings in the rooms, with no microphones or bots lurking or recording what is being said.

I spent an hour with Zoom’s chat bot and then Zoom’s phone bot, both of which established that (a) Zoom does not currently do this, (b) Zoom does not allow people on my Zoom plan to submit feedback or feature requests, (c) Zoom does not provide a phone number where you can talk to a live human being and make a feature request, (d) Zoom does not provide an email address to which you can send feedback or feature requests, and (f) Zoom does not allow people on my Zoom plan to use a contact form to submit feedback or feature requests.

Ironically, it was Zoom’s bot that told me that my only option to try to communicate to Zoom my need for a setting to exclude bots was to submit something in the Zoom Community.  So here I am.

Zoom, we need you to give us a setting that allows admins and hosts to definitively exclude bots when we believe that is necessary.

Please act quickly on this.