Zoom will let users stop data being sent through China after latest privacy scandal

Boss admits that promises to keep data out of China may have been misleading

People pass walk by the Nasdaq building as the screen shows the logo of the video-conferencing software company Zoom after the opening bell ceremony on April 18, 2019 in New York City (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

Zoom will let its paid users decide where their data is going after its latest privacy scandal.

The changes come after criticism over the fact that users' data was being sent through servers in Chinese data centres, potentially allowing conversations and video chats to be intercepted by the Chinese government as they were sent.

Zoom said its centres in the country have "always been" geofenced, meaning that data generated outside of China would not move through the country. But chief executive Eric Yuan admitted that in the rush to meet demand during the coronavirus lockdown some best practices were not implemented and some meeting data may have been routed through China.

Mr Yuan said this issue had since been corrected.

Now, the company has said it will allow its paying subscribers to directly choose which data centre regions are happy for their meeting data to transit through.

The firm currently has eight data centre regions: the United States, Canada, Europe, India, Australia, China, Latin America, and Japan/Hong Kong.

From April 18, every paying Zoom user will be able to opt-in and out of each specific region, the company confirmed.

However, users will not be able to opt-out of their default region, where their account is provisioned, Zoom said, adding that for the majority of customers, this was the United States.

The company also said that free users will be locked to data centres within their default region and will not be able to opt-in or out of others, but that "data of free users outside of China will never be routed through China".

The video conferencing app has grown exponentially during the Covid-19 lockdown as millions of workers and students attempt to stay connected for jobs and study, while family and friends have turned to Zoom and similar apps as a means of staying in touch.

Zoom has admitted struggling to handle waves of new users on the service and has now postponed all new product development in order to focus on correcting security issues discovered on the platform, some of which have come to light thanks to the new, wider use of the service.

Additional reporting by Press Association