Zoom is a United States-based company. As of June 11, 2020 all accounts under VIU's institutional licenses will have all of the data related to their meetings and accounts stored and processed within Canada. This means that using VIUOnline Rooms (Zoom) at VIU complies with BC privacy regulations.
Please Note: This change only applies to meetings hosted by someone whose account is under VIU’s license for Zoom. If you are joining a meeting scheduled by someone outside of our VIU community, or if you create an account outside of VIU's institutional license, your data may be stored and processed outside of Canada.
It is not required for you to create your own Zoom account in order to join your instructors meetings. You can always join meetings that your instructor has scheduled as a guest user. The main purpose of creating your own Zoom account is if you would like to schedule meetings with your classmates outside of class.
Tips for Protecting Your Privacy
If you are looking for information regarding how to better protect your privacy and security when using Zoom, here are a few suggestions:
- Do not join Zoom meetings using an account, as any information regarding your account (name, email address, etc) will be stored on Zooms servers. If you have created an account, considering logging out of your account before you join the meeting.
- When you join a Zoom meeting, the name that you have displayed will be recorded on Zoom's servers. To make this stored information more anonymous, try joining the Zoom meeting using only your first name. If you have an uncommon first name, ask your instructor if you can join the meeting using a agreed upon pseudonym.
- If your instructor is recording your Zoom meeting and you do not wish to be captured in the recording, turn off your camera and disable your microphone. You can still engage in the classroom discussion by typing your thoughts into the chat. Messages inserted into the chat will not be captured in the recording. Your instructor may also pause the recording in order to give students the opportunity to provide their comments about the class without being captured in the recording.
- If you are scheduling any meetings on your own Zoom account, do not insert any personal information into the meeting title or description (such as full names, full course names and codes, email addresses, etc).