Zoom has released two new security features that will allow users to remove and report disruptive meeting participants.

These disruptive meeting participants, popularly “Zoombombers” have become a major issue this year as hackers and pranksters find more ways to interrupt Zoom meetings.

A new security feature will allow hosts and co-hosts to temporarily pause a meeting, disable various features and remove disruptive meeting participants.

The ‘Suspend Participant Activities’ feature will be available under the Security icon.

“Hosts and co-hosts now have the option to temporarily pause their meeting and remove a disruptive participant. By clicking “Suspend Participant Activities,” all video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotation, screen sharing, and recording during that time will stop, and Breakout Rooms will end,” Matt Nagel, Security & Privacy PR Lead at Zoom explained in a blog post.

“The hosts or co-host will be asked if they would like to report a user from their meeting, share any details, and optionally include a screenshot,” Nagel explained.

The users can then resume the meeting and re-enable required features once they click on “Submit” and the reported is removed from their meeting. The feature will also notify Zoom’s Trust & Safety team about the same. Zoom will also send an email to the hosts or co-hosts after the meeting to get more information.

The Suspend Participant Activities feature is enabled by default for all free and paid Zoom users.

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Apart from this, the video-conferencing platform will now also allow meeting participants to report a disruptive user directly from the Zoom client by clicking the top-left Security badge.

Reporting capabilities for participants can be enabled by account owners and admins from their web settings.

Both of these new features are available on the Zoom desktop clients for Mac, PC, and Linux. The platform will add these features to its mobile apps, with support for the web client and VDI later this year, it said.

Zoom earlier this year had announced a 90-day programme to improve privacy and security on its platform with a range of new features.

It had also deployed an At-Risk Meeting Notifier this fall “to scan public social media posts and other websites for publicly shared Zoom Meeting links.”

ALSO READ: Zoom settles with FTC over “deceptive and unfair practices” related to user security

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