A cyberharassment trend that’s been exploding during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has struck a Greater Hartford charity’s 95th annual meeting.
At the United Way of Central and Northern Connecticut’s virtual meeting, held Thursday evening using the popular teleconferencing app Zoom, an uninvited participant accessed the meeting just moments before the scheduled start time, exposing United Way member donors to language and images that Maura Cook, senior director of marketing, described Friday morning as “profane, inappropriate and vulgar.”
Within moments, Cook shut down the Zoom meeting.
Welcome to “Zoombombing,” a trend that has accelerated across the country — including an incident earlier this week disclosed to HBJ by Attorney General William Tong — during the coronavirus pandemic, as companies, nonprofits, schools and others hold meetings virtually, and sometimes without the proper security protocols in place.
Paula Gilberto, president and CEO of the organization, emailed attendees to apologize for the incident, which United Way tweeted about on Friday morning.
“I was shocked by the images,” Gilberto recounted to HBJ on Friday. “I did have that moment of ‘oh my goodness, what is happening?.’ ”
That quickly shifted to how to fix the problem, she said.
Organizers, with the help of a board member, moved the gathering to another application called Web Ex, and completed their planned agenda: Electing 2020 board members, thanking outgoing board members, and providing an update on the nonprofit’s ongoing COVID-19 response.
Gilberto views the incident as a learning experience, but wishes the lesson had come in a less public venue.
“You hate that it’s happening in the moment, with something as important as an annual meeting,” she said.
She expects the United Way and many other organizations are going to be “learning an awful lot about using technology in different ways” because of COVID-19 in the weeks and months ahead.
Cook, who had heard rumblings about Zoombombing, said it will be important to get virtual meeting security right moving forward.
“We pride ourselves on bringing people together, so our immediate focus now is figuring out what the best platforms are and how we can be the most secure technology possible, because we can’t stop doing that,” Cook said.
United Way wasn’t the first organization to suffer a Zoombombing and it likely won’t be the last.
Attorney General William Tong issued a statement Friday disclosing that he and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz attended a virtual meeting this week related to U.S. Census collection efforts that also got hacked.
“Earlier this week, I attended a Zoom conference that was ‘bombed’ by hundreds of profane and racist comments,” Tong said.
His office has since been in contact with officials from Zoom about addressing the problem.
“Whether on Zoom or any other digital platform, hateful and racist speech is not OK—not now, not ever,” Tong said. “Our world is confronting an unprecedented threat, and there are trolls who seek to exploit our fear to turn us against one other. Don’t let them. Together, with love, compassion and courage, we will get through this.”
Around the country, bad actors have targeted and disrupted online classes, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and a variety of other virtual gatherings in recent weeks, often using racist or misogynistic language and sexual imagery, according to reporting from Ars Technica and CNET.
The growing trend has also drawn the attention of the FBI.
CNET reported that online trolls can easily search for Zoom meeting information posted on social media or public websites.
Zoom and the FBI have recommended that meeting organizers require attendees to have a password, use the app’s functions to control who’s allowed on a call and to limit who can share their screen, and avoid publicly sharing meeting links. Tong issued similar recommendations Friday, adding that users should ensure that video conference software is up to date, and to consult IT personnel to ensure security settings are adequate.
A CNN report was used in this story.
