Zoom to provide encryption feature to paid users only, wants to comply with law enforcement

The CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan said that the upcoming end-to-end encryption feature will be available only to only paid users. For free call it is not applicable and law enforcement will be able to access information in case of ‘misuse’ of the platform.

Eric said this after announcing the company’s financial result for Q1 2020. According to him the firm wants to keep this feature away from free users to work with law enforcement in case of the app’s misuse.

“Free users, for sure, we don’t want to give that [end-to-end encryption]. Because we also want to work it together with FBI and local law enforcement, in case some people use Zoom for bad purpose,” he said.

Earlier, platforms which offer end-to-end encryption like WhatsApp faced intense scrutiny in many countries because they were unable to trace the origins of problematic and misleading messages. Zoom wants to avoid being in such a position. It wants to comply with local laws to keep operating across the globe.

Alex Stamos, working as a security consultant with Zoom, said it wants to catch repeat offenders for hate speech or child exploitative content by not offering end-to-end encryption to free users.

In March, in a report it was published that the company do not use end-to-end encryption, despite claiming that on its website and security white paper. Later, Zoom apologized and issued a clarification to specify it didn’t provide the feature at that time.

Last month, the company acquired Keybase.io, an encryption-based identity service, to build its end-to-end encryption offering.

Eric also said that he has received many feedback from users on encryption and the company is working on executing it. But he did not mention the release date of the new feature.

According to the Q1 2020 results, the company grew 169% year-on-year in terms of revenue. Zoom has more than 300 million daily participants attending meetings through the platform.