Taiwan has banned the use of Zoom in official institutions. With this decision, Zoom, which has been on the headlines with privacy violations recently, has received another blow.
The statement was released by the government on Tuesday. The statement said, “if agencies need to chat remotely for their business needs, they should not use products with security concerns such as Zoom”.
“Currently, major international information service providers such as Google and Microsoft are offering free software,” the government said in a statement. At the point of security risk assessment, these software are recommended for use.
Zoom has been heavily criticised in recent days due to safety concerns. The Taiwan government’s ban decision on Zoom stems from concerns about data protection in practice. Zoom is blamed for leaked email addresses and theft of user data, which is thought to be related to the lack of end-to-end encryption in the platform. Also, Zoom encryption keys are known to be routed through China.
It is also stated that the government’s decision stemmed from the tense relationship with China. While the Beijing government does not recognize Taiwan’s independence, they claim that the country is part of their territory.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan agreed on Friday that some data was routed through China. And last week, Elon Musk had banned the use of ZoomX to SpaceX employees due to ‘security and privacy’ concerns.
Zoom did not comment on the subject.
