Comparison of zoom and jitsi request

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi,

it's funny that I see this thread about Zoom this morning. I hate it to
get forced all the times to use crap such as Zoom.

Zoom vs something else sounds to me like choosing between pest and
cholera. While providing less features, Jitsi suffers from CVEs, too.
Without a doubt, Zoom is one of the worst, if not the worst, application
in this area, which makes other applications that are less bad still not
acceptable.

This morning I received a phishing call. When asked about my computer, I
didn't answer "yes", but instead asked why she wanted to know. Be that
as it may, it is conceivable that I said the word “yes” in German, my
native language, colloquially something like “yes, listen, this
conversation is going nowhere, I’ll hang up now”. My analog phones don't
show phone numbers, but the call was definitely from abroad. I kept the
call short for a few seconds and gave no address or other information.
But the fact that I once said “yes” and was already forced to attend
webinars conducted via fine Zoom, or that the unemployment office forced
me to disclose vast amounts of data via fine job listing platforms etc.,
increases the risk that this "yes" on the phone lead to a washing
machine being delivered to me once a month.

It's not a joke, things like this happen. Each time something like this
happens, they talk about careless consumers. It never happened to me,
but I wouldn't be surprised, if this happens to me, too.

One of the problems with Zoom is, that it's seemingly not for free as in
beer to form working groups, but webinars are sometimes given by people
who don't want to pay for it, hence the participants need to exchange
phone numbers via Zoom to work in groups by telephone.

IOW I don't belong to the careless consumers, but we all get forced to
participate in stupid things, such as meetings via Zoom.

Btw. the phishing call started with a woman claiming (in completely
broken German) that my computer had been hacked. It's not, but even if
it were, what's a concern about that? If my computer were ever actually
hacked, I would have to restore the computer to the state it was in
before it was hacked. All data that could be tapped has already been
tapped from Zoom and job exchanges etc. anyway.
A hacked computer shouldn't be the end of the world any more than light
rain. To put it very simply, you should of course unplug backup drives
before Zoom meetings or thunderstorm.

You can order up to 5 "Webcam-Sticker" for free as in beer:
https://www.bmfsfj.de/bmfsfj/service/publikationen/webcamsticker-karte-top-secret-96100

I wonder if the picture does show such a "Webcam-Sticker". If so, then
perhaps it would be better to uninstall the driver.

In a nutshell: If possible don't use Zoom or anything else. If you are
forced to participate in webinar or team meeting, you don't have a
choice at all.

Regards,
Ralf