A legal sector International Women’s Day online event last week was sabotaged and inappropriate images shared on screen, leading to the event being canceled and the organisers warning others to be vigilant in the wake of other IWD events being infiltrated.
Well-known legal marketer and She Breaks The Law marketing head Helen Burness and business psychologist Noo Jones hosted the event on Friday (13 March) for around 100 people, however the event fell victim to the practice known as Zoom Bombing, meaning the meeting was infiltrated by a person or people who share obscene material. Jones said on LinkedIn: “I’m sure all those who showed up are feeling as shocked as we are. Not by the nonsense images necessarily, although they were pretty gross, but by the hostility and drive to destabilise people gathering to share ideas and experiences.”
This follows the sabotage last week of an IWD event hosted by speaker Lou Robey, whose Voice on the Edge of Change LIVE event was similarly infiltrated. Much like Burness and Jones, Robey said she was in shock and physically shaken.
Sharing his support for Burness and Jones on LinkedIn, Manu Kanwar, former general counsel turned founder who was attending the event as a male supporter, said: “I’m so sorry for all the attendees, who had hoped to share, connect and be inspired. Instead, we are all shown the callousness against women that persists in dark corners of our society; the insecurity felt by some very sad, rather hopeless people; and the reason we all need to intentionally (and regularly) come together to support and uplift each other.
“I hope that those attending are not too negatively affected and that this serves only as inspiration to support this and similar causes – and especially each other.’
Craig Kelly, a solicitor at Tend Legal, added: “This is not the first time this has happened recently and things like this are not what anyone wants to see happening. We need to raise the awareness for this type of thing and make it clear that it’s not acceptable.”
In a call to action, Burness said in a LinkedIn post: “I would not want ANY other person to experience what our group experienced yesterday.” She highlighted a post from online training specialist Jo Cook reminding the must dos of setting up a virtual event. See below for some of those points and the link to Cook’s original post is here.
*** EVENT CREATION
When setting up your virtual event, check these settings, or ask the account owner to under Account Management > Account Settings > Security:
* Enable waiting waiting room
* Meeting passcode enabled
* Allow participants to join before host disabled
* Mute all participants when they join a meeting enabled
* Screensharing for host only
These options are good to turn off for public events, but you might want on for functionality in training or closed events:
* Screenshot feature in meeting chat
* Direct messages
* Hyperlinks
* Sending files
* Co-host not adding co-hosts
* Remote control
* Slide control
* Removed participants can’t rejoin
* ENABLE profanity filter
*** SETTING UP THE SESSION
When you login early to setup and run your Zoom event, assuming you are the host, double check these things under Host Tools on the toolbar:
* Enable waiting room
* You can hide profile pictures, which some people might use negatively
Under Allow participants to, turn off the following:
* Sharing screen – this is one of the biggest ways that people hack into the event and show their content
* Unmute themselves (at least at the beginning)
* Share docs
* Share whiteboards
* Collaborate with Zoom apps
Any basically the rest of the list.
What’s really important at the bottom of that Host tools menu in red is “Suspend participant activities”. That is your go to if anyone is doing anything weird or suspicious you don’t like.
Make sure you check out Cook’s post and other tips and put those into practice for all of your future online meetings.
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