Dodged a Jew-hating bullet

[dorchadas]

Time for a new tag.

ChiTribe, which started last year and whose happy hour lisekatevans and I went to back during Chanukah, has been hosting game nights on Zoom as we're all stuck inside our homes. I was thinking about going but in the end, my discovery yesterday that my guest bathroom tub can fit me won out so I did that instead.

Well, maybe it was for the best for my mental health, because it turns out that Zoom isn't secure. I'd seen some people talk about their minyans or other events being disrupted, and yesterday, that's what happened to the Chitribe game night:

This Monday evening, ChiTribe hosted our weekly virtual game night via Zoom with an open room code for the third week in a row. Tonight, immediately after opening the room with our community members, an unknown participant joined the call. This participant invited others and took control of the screen virtually in an antisemitic attempt to disarm and offend the members of ChiTribe game night. Profane images were posted and the unknown participants shouted offensive and antisemitic profanities.

More at the link.

I really hope that the people at Mishkan know about this--to be honest, I should bring it to their attention. It's only a matter of time until something similar happens there if we don't take precautions.

I'm glad they kept the game night going, though, and I'm sure if something similar happens at Mishkan we'll keep things running too. עם ישראל חי

Comments

[grayswandir]

Apparently this has also been happening in online classrooms that are being taught via Zoom. I saw a link to an article about it a few days ago. I didn't actually read the article (not really looking for more things to be outraged about at the moment), but based on the summary it sounds like the exact same scenario -- offensive imagery, racial slurs, general profanity.

I guess this is what some people have decided to do with their quarantine period.

[dorchadas]

As if there wasn't enough suffering being caused by this already.

[symbioid]

I follow David H Hansen (of Ruby on Rails fame (programming library thingy))...

He's been after Zoom for a week or so for other issues, and now I'm seeing this from him and others.

My roomie whose friend is dying of cancer was asking me about it, and I said I didn't know much about it, but from what I heard it was better for large groups and for 4 people is overkill.

Well now I see what's going on, security wise with Zoom, and I'm like no - get something else completely. It's clear this company has a poorly thought out architecture when it comes to even the most basic concepts of security, so I wouldn't trust them more than I could throw them.

I wonder i there is a good universal non-provider bound option. Apple facetime is apple oriented, AFAICT, Hangouts requires a google account.

What other multi-user video chat options are there I wonder...

In the end, this is horrible and yet one more example of how poor security and privilege endangers those most marginalized. I can't imagine how any company would have thought these were good design decisions (having a sequential 10 digit string that's not a hash of anything in particular, not difficult or secure, just type 10 numbers and jackpot). Yes, I read you can password lock the room, but that seems like a bad afterthought to patch up fundamental design flaws.

[ironymaiden]

Discord video chat is good for up to 10 folks, and I've found that sometimes all you really wanted was the group voice channel anyway.

[dorchadas]

Hopefully something will happen after the UK Prime Minister revealed the cabinet meeting ID in a tweet.

[corvi]

Aaaaaaargh. I'm so glad they were able to regroup!