{"id":1941,"date":"2026-04-22T11:13:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T08:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yadin.com\/notes\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2026-04-22T11:13:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T08:13:47","slug":"zoom-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yadin.com\/notes\/zoom-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoom and Theoretical Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Zoom is now so embedded in our daily lives that “zooming” has become a general term describing video conferencing, much like “googling” is now synonymous with running an online search. Over the past five or six years, Zoom and its competitors, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, have replaced or supplemented many forms of in-person interaction, creating a $40 billion market<\/a>. Video conferencing supports working in remote and hybrid teams through meetings, interviews, and collaboration across locations. It enables virtual classes, tutoring, and academic events. It helps people stay connected to distant family and friends. Its ease of use, low cost, and accessibility across devices have made the technology a default for real-time communication, even when in-person options are available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video conferencing has existed since the 1960s, but it failed to become mainstream for decades. Even when internet tools like Skype became available, adoption remained limited. By the late 2010s, enabling technologies such as broadband internet, smartphones, and cloud computing had made video conferencing more viable, but usage remained relatively low. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden global shift to remote work and communication, driving mass adoption of Zoom, which was simple and reliable. Since then, Microsoft and Google have somewhat caught up by bundling and integrating their video conferencing tools, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, into their larger ecosystems\u2014Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. However, Zoom remains the default video conferencing tool in many social contexts. It continues to lead the market and has become essential and deeply embedded in work and social life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zoom has faced significant scrutiny over privacy in the past. Early concerns included incidents of \u201cZoom-bombing,\u201d in which uninvited users disrupted meetings, and unclear, possibly deceptive<\/a>, data protection and security practices. More recently, Zoom has been criticized for overcollection and handling<\/a> of user data, as well as for third-party app privacy<\/a> practices. However, the mainstream adoption of video conferencing suggests a privacy crisis at a more theoretical level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Current legal conceptions of privacy are based on a clear distinction between informational and physical privacy, a distinction that may no longer hold in the face of the complexities of a new reality in which online social interaction is inseparable from human behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right to privacy has two distinct dimensions. Informational privacy is mainly associated with the collection, storage, dissemination, and disclosure of personal information. Physical privacy protects against intrusion into personal spaces, as well as against the watching, following, eavesdropping, and recording of individuals. While informational privacy focuses on the misuse of personal information, physical privacy concerns unwanted sensory access. Some privacy infringements are purely informational, for instance, the widespread online tracking of Internet users by technology corporations, with limited awareness or consent, to monetize their behavior patterns and personal preferences. Others, like peeping through a bedroom window, are purely physical. Some behaviors are compound. For example, hacking into a private webcam feed may involve both physical intrusion and information misuse at different stages of the infringement. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past three decades, legal discourse has shifted its focus to informational privacy, as the development and widespread adoption of Internet technologies have raised and amplified concerns about the misuse of personal information by corporations and governments. Newly enacted privacy statutes and regulations are entirely geared towards protecting informational privacy rights. While informational privacy affects the daily lives of billions, physical privacy is considered limited in scope, as its focus on physical spaces and sensory intrusion is less relevant for meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The widespread adoption of video conferencing technologies has greatly accelerated a move towards online social interaction. This move can be understood in terms of social presence. Social Presence Theory was developed by social psychologists to describe a scale of affective communication as a function of a communication medium’s capacity to facilitate interpersonal awareness. For example, video conferencing facilitates a higher degree of social presence than a voice-only phone call. It creates a more apparent physical proximity, allows for greater intimacy, and conveys more interpersonal information, making it a richer, more socially effective medium of communication. Every means of mediated communication can be placed on a social presence continuum that extends from the most limited forms, such as asynchronous text messaging, to the richest, like real-time virtual reality environments. During the COVID-19 crisis, we saw a rapid shift towards media that provide a higher degree of social presence, addressing the need to replace physical contact with safe, remote social interaction. This drove the rapid mainstream adoption of Zoom and other video conferencing tools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The social presence ideal is physical, face-to-face interaction. As we move higher on the social presence continuum toward more socially robust means of interaction, we get closer to this ideal. Virtual reality environments achieve a high degree of social presence, effectively mirroring real-world interactions, behaviors, and attitudes\u2014creating interesting social and legal effects that I previously discussed in depth<\/a>. A video conference room may not mirror physical reality as effectively, but it still creates substantial social presence. There is a degree of intimacy brought about by sharing social cues such as eye contact, body language, tone of voice, and gestures. There is a sense of immediacy and physical proximity in a shared space, a result of sharing a personal setting with others while viewing them in their own personal space. The communication experience includes sensory, spatial, and social elements that bring it closer to physical interaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Through technology, human behavior is becoming less physical and more virtual; at the same time, online behavior has moved closer to the physical. The distinction between physical privacy and informational privacy may no longer be viable. Consider, for example, the act of spying on a video conference call. Viewing this privacy infringement solely in terms of information misuse, the collection of information without consent or authorization, mischaracterizes this harmful behavior. It ignores the substantial difference in social presence between interaction via video conference and interaction via means such as email or texting. At the same time, viewing the act of spying on a video conference call solely in terms of intrusion into a personal space, peeping, or eavesdropping, seems far-fetched; there is still a difference between mediated, online interaction and a face-to-face meeting that cannot be ignored. Perhaps it is best to view privacy infringements involving interaction on the higher end of the social presence continuum as both physical and informational. Or perhaps it is time to reconsider the theoretical disparity between physical and informational privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One possible approach is to treat privacy protections as graduated rather than fixed. Different means of communication carry different degrees of social presence, and privacy law could reflect this. A hacked email is not the same as covert access to a live video conference, and the difference is not merely technical. A more robust framework might recognize a category of high-presence interaction that draws on both informational and physical privacy protections. Unauthorized access to such interactions would be treated not only as a misuse of personal information but as something closer to unlawful intrusion into a socially intimate space. This would have practical implications for remedies, consent requirements, and the standard by which violations are judged. This is not necessarily a radical departure from existing privacy law. It could be understood as a return to its underlying purpose: protecting reasonable expectations of intimacy and autonomy, applied to the ways people now interact through technology. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n \n \n \n <\/svg>32\n \u00b7<\/span>\n \n \n \n <\/svg>\n 1<\/span>\n <\/span>\n \u00b7<\/span>\n Apr. 22, 2026\n \u00b7<\/span> Markets<\/a>, Privacy<\/a>\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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continue to this week’s featured note:<\/p>\n\n\n\n