Zoom’s iOS app no longer sends data to Facebook

Zoom’s iOS app is no longer sending your private data to Facebook.

The videoconferencing software recently saw its usage spike as more and more people spend time at home due to the coronavirus outbreak. However, several concerns have been raised about its privacy practices, including the fact that its iOS app sends data such as the user’s location and device details to Facebook — even if the user doesn’t have a Facebook account.

Now, Motherboard reports that Zoom’s iOS app was updated to stop sending data to Facebook, as the company found that some of the data sent was “unnecessary.”

“We originally implemented the “Login with Facebook” feature using the Facebook SDK for iOS (Software Development Kit) in order to provide our users with another convenient way to access our platform. However, we were made aware (…) that the Facebook SDK was collecting device information unnecessary for us to provide our services,” Zoom wrote in a blog post Friday.

“Our customers’ privacy is incredibly important to us, and therefore we decided to remove the Facebook SDK in our iOS client and have reconfigured the feature so that users will still be able to log in with Facebook via their browser,” the post said. 

Users need to update to the latest version of Zoom on iOS to see the change; the new version has been available since Friday. 

Among the myriad videoconferencing apps out there, Zoom has emerged as many users’ favorite because of superb video and audio quality, and despite the fact that the free version of Zoom shuts meetings down after 40 minutes. It’s good that the company’s fixing its privacy issues, though some potential problems remain.