A historic San Francisco church is suing Zoom, claiming the video-conferencing app’s security failures enabled a hacker to stream porn into a Bible-study class.
The X-rated content, played at Saint Paulus Lutheran Church’s May 6 class, was seen by the church’s administrator and elderly congregants, leaving them “traumatized and helpless,” the suit alleges.
“Instead of providing Saint Paulus and its congregants with a password-protected and secure videoconferencing platform, Zoom allowed a ‘known offender’ — one who ‘has been reported multiple times to the authorities’ — to Zoombomb the class,” the suit, filed Wednesday in San Jose federal court, alleges.
Class attendees, most of them senior citizens, “had their computer screens hijacked and their control buttons disabled while being forced to watch pornographic video footages,” the suit says.
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“Because of Zoom’s utter failure in providing security, Saint Paulus’s Bible-study class was Zoombombed twice within minutes,” the suit says.
Following the illicit interruption, which caused the class to be canceled, the church’s administration reached out to Zoom for help, but claims “Zoom did nothing,” according to the suit.
The company acknowledged the hack, but said officials took speedy action.
“On the same day we learned of this incident, we identified the offender, took action to block their access to the platform and reported them to relevant authorities,” a Zoom spokesperson said in a statement.
“We also encourage all meeting hosts to take advantage of Zoom’s recently updated security features and follow other best practices, including making sure not to broadly share meeting IDs and passwords online, as appeared to be the case here,” the statement said.
The church is seeking unspecified damages for negligence and privacy violations.