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FBI: Nazis, doxxers and other pests looking for Zoom sessions to swarm

The FBI office in Boston reports on two instances in which Massachusetts teachers had their classrooms on the Zoom system interrupted by trollers.

In one case, an unidentified person connected to a high-school teacher's online class, yelled a profanity and then shouted the teacher’s home address in the middle of instruction." In the other, another school had a meeting interrupted by somebody who showed off his swastika tattoos.

Yesterday, meanwhile, somebody broke into a sermon Zoomed for the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain to shout homophobic and racist gibberish.

The FBI has several tips, including requiring passwords for online meetings or putting would-be participants in the "waiting room" until they can be vetted. Also, don't advertise Zoom meetings on social media and only allow hosts to do screensharing.

If you were a victim of a teleconference hijacking, or any cyber-crime for that matter, report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. Additionally, if you receive a specific threat during a teleconference, please report it to us at tips.fbi.gov or call the FBI Boston Division at (857) 386-2000.

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Comments

I wonder how many teachers got the least little bit of training for this - including the things that Cybah said about sign ins and muting and other security features?

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Also - how many teachers jumped into offering Zoom meetups with children before they received any direction or support?

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We changed the default Zoom settings globally to only allow authenticated users (which faculty can always undo if they need); this will fix almost any issues we have since we would know who was zoombombing the class.

Also, we sent faculty short 1 page instructions on things like logging in, security settings, how to manage a meeting, etc in addition to 3-5 training opportunities per day for 2 weeks.

I have a feeling we did more than most however.

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