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Comment by Mathnerd314 | Hacker News Reader

EFF seems to be the source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-a...

> If attendees of a meeting do not have the Zoom video window in focus during a call where the host is screen-sharing, after 30 seconds the host can see indicators next to each participant’s name indicating that the Zoom window is not active.

It doesn't seem too invasive, although of course it'd still be annoying if you have two monitors etc.

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This feature is primarily used in educational-type settings so instructors can tell that students aren't paying attention to something else.

As far as I've been able to determine, there is no collection of "apps" or other data, just "not paying attention" time.

So what if the student has their notes app pulled up? That's a legitimate reason to trigger the alert. The student could also just be playing xbox or something unbeknownst to the professor and still appear alert on the webcam.

It seems like it trades a lot of privacy for something students will evade with no effort at all.

Exactly. At least the student whose window is not in focus is at their computer

It seems reasonable for Zoom or any app to know whether its window has focus. That doesn't imply spying on anything else you're doing.

I think the issue is not that Zoom knows if its application window has focus, but that it reports focus state to anyone other than the user.

For example:

1. Zoom knows it’s not focused on Bob’s machine, and notifies Bob that someone has begun sharing their screen.

2. Zoom knows it’s not focused on Bob’s machine and notifies Sally of this.

Scenario 1 seems acceptable and helpful. Scenario 2 is invasive and unnecessary.

This reminds me of read receipts in chat apps. Hate them with a passion. I usually just leave the chat itself unopened and read the notifications until I'm ready to actually reply.

It can be helpful for certain scenarios. And others don't have to enable it. For companies, at least in the enterprise plan you can also disable it company-wide (according to reports by others). So companies can simply opt out for everyone.

Is it only tracking whether the zoom window is focused (as in, a Boolean)? Is there evidence of more?

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