Guarding against Zoom bombing

[Capricej]

I run a successful weekly group for LGBTQ+ writers over Zoom. Participants find it through Meetup.com. In recent weeks we have had two separate incidents of Zoom bombing, which is, of course, interruptive and can be extremely offensive and disturbing. I already operate a waiting room but would like to ask the Zoom community if there are other screening measures I can introduce eg being able to question a new person who enters the waiting room. I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @Capricej.

I’m happy to hear that most of your experience has been trouble-free, but as you well know, there always seems to be a few people with bad intentions, no matter what you do.

The first recommendation is to never put the Join link directly on any sort of social media; putting it on Meetup may also problematic. (I haven’t used Meetup in almost 2 years, so I’m not very familiar with any security features available there; you might see what they have to offer too.)

One approach that will help is to require registration for your event. Put the Registration link on Meetup, and any other public-facing sites. This alone will ward off some people with bad intentions. Unfortunately, anyone can register - even the bad ones. If you know your usual attendees, you might be able to figure out which potential new attendees might need some extra attention during the initial parts of the meeting.

A second additional step would be to enable Require Authentication on your meetings. This means every attendee must be logged into their Zoom account in order to enter the meeting. It shouldn’t be a barrier for anyone’s participation – anyone without a Zoom account can sign up for a free (Basic) account.

Another point: don’t use Recurring Meetings for your group. This re-uses the same Meeting ID and therefore the same Join link. Having a different Meeting ID and Join link every time with ensure that nobody can get access that will continue over time – they have to find the new link each Meeting. It might be a little inconvenient for some people, but I’m sure if they find your meetings informative and helpful, they’ll make the effort. 

Here’s how I would set up a meeting for maximum security:

Finally, any time you have a problem attendee, use the features of the Zoom Meeting app to remove them from your Meeting, and afterward follow up with a report to Zoom’s Trust and Security group.

Here are a few Zoom Support articles that might provide some additional help and details for you:

https://explore.zoom.us/en/trust/

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360042791091-Reporting-inappropriate-behavior
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/4406604615693-Requiring-authentication-to-join-a-meeting-w...

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/211579443-Scheduling-and-customizing-a-meeting-with-regist...

https://blog.zoom.us/secure-your-meetings-zoom-waiting-rooms/

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115000332726-Using-Waiting-Room 

[Capricej]

Thanks for all the suggestions, Ray. What I actually did was introduce a screening process. On the page for each event I explained that for safety reasons anyone joining for the first time should message me with their email address and I would send them a short list of questions. The combination of the answers to the questions and the need to go through this process has ensured, up to the present, only genuine people have joined. Obviously, more work administratively but well-worth it to preserve the integrity of the group. 

[Ray_Harwood]

Excellent!  Sometimes a little extra work is worth the effort.