Zoom: Best practices to avoid "Zoom-bombing"

Zoom-bombing is the term for when individuals "gate-crash" Zoom meetings. These uninvited guests share their screens to bombard real attendees with disturbing or distracting content. Most attacks exploit publicly available Zoom links. Depending on your personal settings, however, some ostensibly private meetings may also be vulnerable. Below are a few strategies that ensure your meetings are not disrupted. (For a more detailed explanation check out this explainer)

Best practices

Here are some best practices to follow to avoid Zoom-bombing.

1. Avoid using your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to host public events. Your PMI is essentially one continuous meeting, and people can pop in and out at any time.
   • Learn about meeting IDs and how to generate a random meeting ID.
   • Full video tutorial
   • You can use the same meeting ID for a recurring meeting. Just make sure that you use a different meeting ID for each meeting.
2. Do not share you meeting links on public forums such as Facebook. Instead share meeting links with your students via Google Classroom.
3. Always use a passcode for your meetings.  The passwords are embedded in the meeting links so students and other attendees do not need to enter a passcode.
4. Familiarize yourself with Zoom’s settings and features. Understand how to protect your virtual space when you need to.
   • For example, the Waiting Room is a helpful feature for hosts to control who comes and goes.
5. To prevent random people in your meetings from taking control of the screen, restrict sharing to yourself. See also How to restrict sharing in Zoom meetings.
6. Always run the latest version of the Zoom app. Don't click Skip or Install Later when prompted to upgrade the app.

Other resources

• Zoom Blog: How to Keep Uninvited Guests Out of Your Zoom Event
• Clever: Recommended Zoom settings