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Despite security concerns, Zoom users top 300 million, shares hit record

Despite security concerns, Zoom users top 300 million, shares hit record

Eric Yuan, Zoom

Despite the growing criticism over privacy issues, Zoom video conferencing app's user base grew by another 50% bring the number to 300 million in the last three weeks. While the shares of the US-based company rose 12% to a record high of $168.24 today.

The numbers were released on late Wednesday by Chief Executive Eric Yuan.

The coronavirus-driven lockdown of millions of people globally has driven huge growth in the use of platforms like Zoom, Skype or Microsoft's Teams application.

Over the last few months, Zoom has faced a barrage of criticism from cybersecurity experts over bugs in its codes and the lack of end-to-end encryption of its chat sessions.

After several incidents of "zoombombing", the video conferencing app is banned has been banned by authorities around the world including Elon Musk’s venture SpaceX, Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered as well as governments in Germany, Taiwan and Singapore.

Researchers say "Zoombombing" incidents, where uninvited guests crash meetings, were caused by simple choices made by some of the millions of new users of the app and that the company has taken sensible steps including giving hosts the ability to lock meetings and restrict what attendees can do.

It has appointed former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos and a number of other experts to attack these concerns and security researchers say it has responded robustly to the issues.

(With inputs from agencies)