The Intercept reported today that, despite telling users that "Zoom is using an end to end encrypted connection," the company does not in fact end-to-end encrypt calls on its platform. .

"For personal use, I'd recommend FaceTime, as Apple has a great record on making user privacy a priority and things like end-to-end encryption are a plus too," he wrote. .

What pains me about Zoom being such sleazeballs when it comes to both security and privacy is just how unnecessary it is.

Privacy settings allows you to password protect video calls, and a blur background feature means you can digitally obscure your messy apartment. 

"If you want an alternative to Zoom: try Jitsi Meet," wrote the organization

If you want an alternative to Zoom: try Jitsi Meet

While Jitsi does employ encryption, it's important to note that calls on Jitsit are not end-to-end encrypted like on Signal or FaceTime. 

"WebRTC does not (yet) provide a way of conducting multi-party conversations with end-to-end encryption," explains the Jitsi GitHub page

As a result, your stream is encrypted on the network but decrypted on the machine that hosts the bridge when using Jitsi Meet."

Dan Tentler, executive founder of the security company Phobos Group, cautioned that Jitsi Meet doesn't exactly wow him. 

"I've spoken to an alarming number of people who say they are 'privacy engineers' or 'privacy people' who do not know the first thing about security, and do not understand that without security you can't have privacy," he explained over email, "and having literally looked at [Jitsi] for 30 seconds, I'm categorizing them in this manner."