How to Prevent Unwanted Guests in Your Zoom Meetings
Zoom meetings are used for collaboration and generally for internal teams or people who know each other. It is ideal for company or team meetings, get-togethers, and special events for friends and family. It is designed for interaction and engagement among the attendees.
Workshops and other focus group discussions can also be facilitated via Zoom meetings. It’s a great venue to network and reach people on the other side of the globe.
Security is a major component of the Zoom platform. They take it seriously due to incidents of Zoom bombing in the past.
There are people who might have a different agenda and have wicked plans to gatecrash a Zoom meeting. It happens when uninvited guests joined a virtual meeting, share disturbing content, and disrupt the meeting in the process.
4 Common Reasons Why Uninvited Guests Can Join a Zoom Meeting
Not using the right platform – Decide whether a Zoom meeting or webinar is the right solution for your event. Generally, if the event is for people who don’t know each other Zoom webinar could be the right choice. In addition, Zoom launches its Zoom events platform which added more security in a Zoom event. Check this out to know more about the Zoom Events platform https://www.jumpwiremedia.com/blog-collection/2021/6/29/the-zoom-events-platform
Meeting information is made open to the public- The meeting ID or the meeting link with a passcode is considered to be confidential available only for the invited guests. Unless you want to invite anyone into your meeting, make sure to share the meeting link directly with the participants or to your private groups. If this is posted on a social media platform, it is now accessible to the public and technically anyone can join the meeting.
Personal Meeting is shared with other people- Each Zoom user is provided a PMI or Personal Meeting ID. You just need a meeting ID to join a Zoom meeting. If the PMI is shared out in the open, it can be compromised and anyone with the ID can crash your meeting. It’s best to use a random meeting ID instead.
Unfamiliarity with the Zoom security setting- This is totally understandable. But if you want to secure your Zoom meeting then it’s time to do a little tinkering.
Let me guide you through some settings you might need in your meetings.
Before the meeting:
When scheduling a Zoom meeting create a random meeting ID & require a passcode but always encourage the participants not to share the details in public like on social media.
You may also click require registration during setting up the meeting or webinar. A registration link will be provided. That link will direct to the registration landing page which can be customized. You can add a logo and a banner for your event.
If someone signs up, as the host you can approve the registration manually or set it to automatic. The registrant will now receive a confirmation email with the meeting link that is unique to them.
You can also require that the participant must be an authenticated user. It is a Zoom user with a confirmed email.
Don’t forget to enable the waiting room. It serves as a waiting area when the participants join the meeting or webinar. You can choose to accept or not the people in the waiting room.
The waiting room can be customized and you can write a message which the participants can see before they are admitted to the meeting. It’s a good place to set guidelines or reminders for the event.
During the meeting:
Once you admitted the participants and started the meeting, you have the option to lock the Zoom meeting. No new participants can join the meeting even if they have the meeting details. Go to the Security icon at the bottom of your Zoom window and choose the button that says Lock Meeting.
Just in case there are disruptive participants, you can choose to remove them. You can either go to the Security icon or to the participant’s menu. When you click the Security icon, you can see the remove option in the pop-up. On the participant’s menu, hover your mouse in the participant’s name and click more. You’ll see an option to remove the participant.
Another way to avoid disruption in your Zoom meeting is to restrict participants from screen sharing. Make sure not to miss this one! As the host or presenter, it’s annoying and distracting when another participant slice through your talk or presentation by accidentally sharing their screen. Zoom bombers use this feature to throw off the meeting. In the screen sharing settings, select only one participant can share at a time and allow only host.
A more advanced Zoom bomber may use the video camera to create chaos in the meeting. Aside from turning their video on and do some distracting things, they can show a video or any visual material in their camera output using a virtual camera. Not just that, they can also incorporate the sounds using a virtual audio cable connected to the microphone. As the meeting host, you need to be quick to stop or disable video of the certain participant and mute them right away. Just in case, there are several noises and you’re not sure who is doing it, you can choose the mute all button at the bottom of the participant’s list. You can also uncheck the box to allow participants to unmute themselves. Take note that a co-host can override this and can still turn on his audio after he/she has been muted.
If worse comes to worst and you feel like lots are going on and the meeting disruptions are unmanageable, you can choose to suspend participants’ activities. Select this option in the Security icon. All participant activities such as the video, audio, in-meeting chat, screen-sharing, annotation, recording, and end Breakout rooms will be temporarily paused. You have a choice to report this to Zoom. To resume the meeting, you need to enable each of the features.
We don’t usually care or mind these things until it happens to us. Fortunately, you already know the settings and features you need to set up to make your Zoom event more secure. Security is more important than ever in the world of connectivity and easy access to almost anything in the virtual space.