Users are trolled by the Zoom function that allows you to detect if you are aware of a videoconference (but do it wrong)

Zoom it has been one of the applications that more has grown in this new scenario that is the crisis of the coronavirushaving managed to add 2.2 million new users in the year so far (for the most part, employees that need the tool to be passed to the home office).

But in the last week, users have reacted with surprise after spread the news that Zoom allows you to host a video call to enable a function known as “follow-up care of the wizards”that in a nutshell detects and notifies you when another participant of the conversation remains for half a minute outside the same.

Given that the host may be in many cases a hierarchical superior of the rest of videoconferenciantes, which software incorporate a ‘sneak’ that points to the clueless has led to a stupor on many users. A stupor which has rapidly given rise to raise fun innovations to circumvent the surveillance Zoom.

Videos in a loop to escaquearse (SPOILER: it doesn’t work)

Rapidly some users discovered that they could use a function of ‘custom background’ that includes the version of ‘Rooms’ Zoom (worth $ 500 per year, but many companies are opting for it, so employees will also have access to its functionalities).

What allows for the custom background is use a photo or a short video in loop so that it appears behind our image in the webcam (or in our place, if we ausentamos). So, if you don’t finish your get the idea:

@zacherycura

How to look like you’re paying attention in your online class!!!! ##fyp ##foryou ##onlineclass @nancydrewdoes_coke ##newyork ##PlayWithLife ##zoom

I A. M. – Lonr.

But this trend of recording videos to escaquearse is due to a mistaken understanding of how the system works follow-up care of Zoom: the platform does not use any kind of analysis of the video signal or audio from our webcam to detect whether we appear or not in the same.

As explained on his own website, the Zoom functionality is based on detecting where is the focus of the user: that is to say, what window is in the foreground on your desktop and/or in which one is clicking.

So, as much as we curremos the custom background Zoom, if before you go we used to look at Twitter, and we have not returned the focus to Zoom, we have a problem

.

Even worse: even if we don’t move from in front of the screen in no timebut the host detects that we have been the 45 minutes of video doing something else (reading Engadget, for example), also we will have a problem.

Via | Vice

Image | @EchinoKate

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The news

Users are trolled by the Zoom function that allows you to detect if you are aware of a videoconference (but do it wrong)

it was originally published in

Engadget

by
Marcos Merino

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