The COVID-19 pandemic is all that’s being talked about right now. It is a big deal and is unfortunately causing numerous societal disruptions. A large portion of the workforce is now working from home. Students are continuing their classes as home with distance learning tools. As a result of this, many new programs and technologies are being used to facilitate this. Zoom meetings is very popular right now for digital classrooms and collaboration between coworkers and for business meetings. Tools like these and many others are great for this situation and they allow people to get their work done with little issue. However, privacy issues arise from these tools. Administrators can monitor Zoom meetings within their organization without the employee or client’s notice or consent. Zoom meeting hosts can also tell whether their participant’s focus is on the meeting or not. These are some potentially privacy-invading features that we must be aware of. Many people are new to these tools and do not know of these features. Another concern is company VPNs, used by employees working at home to connect to the company network to gain access to resources they need. While this alone is not an issue, many people fail to realize that when they are connected to a company VPN, all of their internet traffic is transmitted through their work network just as if they were sitting in the office on their computer. The danger is that many users are unaware of this and continue to use their computer for personal use with the VPN connected, or even leave it connected after their shift is over. Users should be aware of this and always disconnect from the VPN when they access personal information over the internet or are done with work for the day to prevent their personal information from passing through the company network.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis
LIS 4022 Spring 2020 