Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

(blogs.harvard.edu)

1597 points seapunk | 1 comments | 27 Mar 20 14:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.218s | source

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mrpippy ◴[27 Mar 20 20:39 UTC] No.22706650[source]▶

I just downloaded Zoom for Mac, saw that it was a .pkg file. Great, I can see what files it installs before I install it.

I open the .pkg, click Continue so it can run its script, then a second later Installer quits and the app launches. What?!

Turns out, Zoom installs the entire app in the 'preinstall' script of the installer package! Inside there's a copy of '7z', and the app is extracted with that. The preinstall script is littered with typos and poor grammar.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that Apple is going to force all Mac software to come through the App Store, but when I see stuff this stupid...I start to wonder.

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Wowfunhappy ◴[27 Mar 20 21:50 UTC] No.22707224[source]▶

>>22706650 #

While I also dislike this type of thing, remember that Zoom's business is built on getting people into calls as quickly as possible. Seconds matter.

So I can totally understand why they would want to use 7zip to shave kilobytes off the download size.

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1. donarb ◴[02 Apr 20 22:08 UTC] No.22764419[source]▶

>>22707224 #

> Seconds matter.

Whenever I have been told that I have a meeting coming up with some kind of conferencing software that I don't have installed, I immediately install it. I don't wait until 3 minutes before the call to try and install. All kinds of things could happen, such as incompatibilities or missing passcodes.

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