SAN ANTONIO — For many, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic may have quieted life for now. But for others, including Megan Caron, thing have gotten busier.
"After COVID-19 I became the lead of the emergency childcare taskforce," Caron said via FaceTime.
Caron works for the city of Nashua, New Hampshire. (Full disclosure: Caron is also the former college classmate of the reporter for this story.) And she found herself in a disturbing situation while on a Zoom call with a state task force last week.
"The next thing I know, there's pornography on the screen, there's racial slurs, there are swastikas being drawn and I was really confused I was also really frustrated," Caron recalled.
It's an unfortunate trend both the FBI and Department of Justice are warning about these days, pranks that authorities are saying is a federal crime punishable by fines or prison time.
"It's certainly illegal to do this," said Kierk Sanderlin, a cybersecurity expert.
It's also something that can be avoided.
Since the uptick in hijacking attempts started, Zoom has emphasized new security measures like allowing meetings to be password-protected as well as a "waiting room" feature which allows users to screen those trying to enter the meeting.
But you should also make sure you're on the right site. According to Sanderlin, the number of website with "zoom" in the name have jumped by 25% over the last week.
"What we found was 4% of those domains are malicious," Sanderlin said. "It's very possible they can steal your Zoom username and password and then masquerade as you and host meetings as you in order to do all sorts of bad things."