With UMass Boston moving onto an online platform, most of our classes are being held by what I have nicknamed “The University of Zoom.” We all know Zoom is an online platform and is a new way to learn. People have this need to ruin it and make it not nearly as productive. Yup! I am talking about the well known trick of the internet called Zoom bombing. 

Last Wednesday I met with my Philosophy class on Zoom at 1 p.m. This was normal and there was not a single thing that made it look like it was weird. Then this guy named Jack Denmo came in and we all just ignored him because he was not doing anything to us. That was, until he turned his camera on and gave my poor professor a hard time. Jack was wearing a Batman mask, was shirtless, moaning loudly, acting like he was pleasuring himself and blasting porn over the entire Zoom call. We were all annoyed with it because not only is this school, but also unlike Jack, we had paid for our class time. 

This led some other students in the class to want to learn more about this “Jack Denmo” and one student found him. First, the student looked him up on Instagram to see if he goes to UMass Boston and there was not a single thing that made him look like he was a student. This is where our story gets really weird! Jack Denmo is a YouTuber who has a pretty large platform. He has about 538 thousand subscribers along with a video about pretending to be choked to death on random Zoom calls. One, how on Earth is it ethical to make a video pretending to be KILLED in front of people, and two, how is it ethical to get in the way of students learning? I am not trying to hide that I do not approve of his actions. This was something that made me, and a few other students, extremely uncomfortable. I did not pay to be able to go to school just to be interrupted by someone who does not have the decency to respect my right to an education. He is clearly just trying to become famous for being a horrible person but did you know there could be legal consequences?

An article came out on April 3 by The Verge about how “Zoom bombing” is a federal offense. If you are found to be Zoom bombing you can be charged with disrupting a public meeting, computer intrusion, using a computer to commit a crime, hate crimes, fraud, or transmitting threatening communications. This simple “harmless” joke could end up with you being in jail. But, how can you protect yourself from these Zoom bombers?

The first thing to do is whenever you make a meeting with Zoom is to put a lock on it. The only people who will be able to enter the Zoom meeting are those that have the passcode to be let in. If you have been Zoom bombed and want to report it you can go to the Internet Crime Complaint Center for the FBI. Another thing to mention is that Zoom is in the process of making their site safer and harder to hack. I really hope they improve on this because not only is this keeping people from being able to learn it puts companies with sensitive information in a bad situation.