1.14.23 – Zoom Securuity Guide Workshop – Transcript

[Mark M, Tech Chair]

My name is Mark. I am an alcoholic.
I have the honor and privilege of serving as the Technology Chair for OIAA, and some of you even voted for me to do that at the last Assembly, and I’m honored, humbled. So thank you. Can we start, please? With a serenity prayer?

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Thank you again. Mark alcoholic. I’ll tell you just a bit about me and some of my background here in online AA, my home group is called Morning Meditation Evening Reflections. It’s a group that came to the online virtual world as a result of Covid, like, I’m sure almost all of you. I had never met that meeting before. It was a meeting that took place at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, home of Dr. Bob and Sister Ignatia, I found that out later. I went to this first meeting because it said St. Thomas and my kids all went to a St.Thomas Catholic Grade school. So I was drawn by that name in the meeting description on the online Directory. Not knowing anything about the history of the meeting, and I’ve been going to that meeting ever since. It’s coming up on 3 years, I have the privilege of serving as Business Chair. We run 18 meetings a week, one every morning, one every evening, and then we have some meetings during the week.

We have approximately, we probably average 85 to 90. We hit 100 very often in our meetings. We have a service team at every meeting that consists of 5 to 7 people. There’s a chair, there’s a secretary posting information in chat and sharing screens. There’s security, and there’s 2 admin. We are bombed. We are visited by zoom bombers. Probably every meeting. It doesn’t bother us too much. We’ve made a little bit of a sport of it. We’ve gotten very good at recognizing the activity as soon as they come in. If we let them in through our waiting room, we’re pretty quick to get them out. We are far from perfect at not seeing any of the disruptive activity videos, swear words, racial epitaphs that happen when they come to disrupt a meeting but we’ve come to accept it. It’s just part of this virtual world that we’re living in.

That we’re having this meeting today is a quick result of Jan. Jan, thank you. She is on the PAC. She leads the PAC committee that’s policies and admissions. Anytime somebody submits a new meeting to be added to our directory it goes through Jan. Jan asks you a few questions, and we get you set up. In the last month we saw over 61 listings or groups write to us, saying, please take us out of the Directory. That was a high number, more a higher number than we’ve experienced. And when asked why, I would say, probably 90% of those groups responded, we can’t handle the Zoom bombers. Take us off the directory. Many of those groups decided they weren’t even going to stay online anymore. They were done. They couldn’t handle it. There were too upset. They were too discouraged. And so they wanted to quit.

I wrote an email that maybe many of you saw. Some people appreciated it. Some people thought it was too strong, but I do have the belief that if a Zoomer takes a meeting off the directory and stops a meeting from actually occurring, they may actually succeed in killing an alcoholic who might need that one meeting that one hour of that one day. It is a reality to me. So we’ve come to have a bit of an apprehension over these people. We’ve come to have a great distress over them. But let’s also remember the principles of our program right? We are to be patient, tolerant, kind, and loving. Sometimes that’s hard, right? Because they can be upsetting. But that is our calling right? It’s our responsibility to make sure the hand of AA is always there when someone needs it and reaches out for it. So it’s our responsibility to do all we can to continue our meetings and having a Zoom Meeting requires some responsibility. It requires some dedication requires some practice that requires some training, some knowledge, right? And we’re here to help you get some of that today.

I’m gonna read this one statement that somebody in our committee said, he said, although we strive to ensure our online meetings and groups at OIAA are safe. We understand that every barrier in place to prevent a malicious bomber, could also prevent a newcomer from joining an online meeting for the first time. We encourage all. OIAA meeting participants to consider bombers act of malice as an opportunity to demonstrate patience and tolerance toward everyone. Let’s consider that bombers are in the right place, that we are all carrying the message of AA.

Our objectives here today are pretty simple. We’re gonna keep this whole format very simple. I see a lot of raised hands. We’re gonna take questions in a little bit. I’m gonna ask you to lower your hands. We’re gonna do 2 things. One, I’m almost done talking. We want to give you hope. If you’ve been distressed over the situation we want to give you some answers. We want to give you some help all right along that line.

And Melinda, this would be a good time. We’re gonna send out a little quick sign up. There’s 2 questions at the end of that sign up form.

I’m so sorry. Do we have an interpreter here? I’m so sorry. Maybe that’s the hand that Dave’s got up. I thought we were gonna have one here today, and I don’t know that we do. Patty was possibly coming. Patty, are you here? If you would raise your hand? If you’re here for a Spanish interpretation.

We’re at 500. Is that our limit, Tom? Wow! I think we hit our limit

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yes, and if I may say something really quick, you guys can actually go to the website and do a live upgrade to a 1,000 right now.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Yeah.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
And it will upgrade this meeting without us having to restart it, and I think it’s so important if people want it, that bad. I’m even willing to donate the money to do it for a month. Let’s just please do it. Somebody go to your site and…

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Dave W. I just co-hosted. I think you have access to the zoom account. Dave’s on it. You know what Dave can do it thumbs up.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Cool.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Dave. Hey, Sunrise, you want to translate. Sunrise. Did you raise a hand. All right. So at this point we don’t have an interpreter. All right. So the format is simply, I’m gonna ask for a couple hands. I see a few up now. I’m not sure what you wanted to ask or talk about Okay. And after that, 30¬†min or so, we’re gonna open it up, raised hands for a forum to let you talk about your experience. What’s worked? What hasn’t ask questions and I’m sorry I got strayed by the chat, and we’ll have a discussion, and we’ll stay here. Thomas offered to stay as long as is needed. I’ll stay as long as needed to try to get questions answered.

So what I’m Gonna ask Melinda to put in the chat for us is a sign up. We’re also at OIAA we’re considering the idea of putting together a basically a Zoom support team for all our meetings, that if you have questions, if you even want somebody to come attend your meeting and see how you run it give you suggestions to provide training to your group to stage training. We’re gonna we’re gonna look to set that up. So we’re gonna send out a form that I’ll identify.

If a you’ve been interest, you are interested in becoming part of that support team or B, you think your group would like some support or training. So. Thank you, Melinda, for that. That’ll be in the chat for everybody to click on and fill out the form.

Now I do see some hands up. If these are hands that are up because you are one of those groups that delisted, I’m gonna start in order and see if that is true and give you about 30¬†seconds to share your experience.

Okay, Daniel.

[Daniel B. (The Australian 24 Hour Marathon Meeting]
My question was on the live transcript is, that is, that is that the same? I’ve never seen that before. Is that the same as chat? Or what is that?

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
The Live Transcript is a closed caption. It’s listening and recognizing everything that’s said, and it’ll put it in a closed caption at the bottom of the screen.

[Daniel B. (The Australian 24 Hour Marathon Meeting]
And you said you’ll be able to, that you’re gonna have, this meeting is gonna be transcribed, or we can save that. Cause I’m representing my group. But there’s probably other people in here. But you know there, I want to get this back to the to some other people in my group.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
We will save the transcript of the meeting. Yes, I think somebody turned it on.

[Daniel B. (The Australian 24 Hour Marathon Meeting]
How do I do that?

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
You don’t need to, we’ll save it, and then we’ll get it distributed.

[Daniel B. (The Australian 24 Hour Marathon Meeting]
Okay. Gotcha. Got it. Okay.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Okay, thanks. Alright, Dusty.

[Dusty M In FL]
Yeah, I’m with a group in Florida that got bombed and got off the list because of it.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Okay? And how many people were you typically having in your meeting?

[Dusty M In FL]
Around, around, 30, and we got bombed the day we went online with OIAA Central. We got bombed that day.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Okay. And how long did you stay online before you decided to come off the directory?

[Dusty M In FL]
Well, they got off that list. We still operate, but we took down share. We did not create a waiting room, but it’s you know. We were hoping to get more people from around the country, and that kind of blew that idea so…

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
We’re here to help you today, we’ll hope to get you back.

[Dusty M In FL]
Okay.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you. Peter.

[Peter M BPI Bos North Shore]
Hi, Buddy, Peter, alcoholic, I’m a member of the Back Porch International. We went offline we took out a group off, we de-listed, but we did approximately 3 months, maybe maybe a little bit more.
And what we found is we weren’t reaching the new, the new people in our, we were really having between 50, and 70 people. And then it kinda just dwindled right down. We weren’t getting the new people. So we we went back when we decided to re-list. And now we got our bombers back. But and we found it more important to reach out to the people who are suffering. Deal with the bombers as they are.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Peter. Thank you so much. Asbury Big Book group.

[Asbury BB Group]
I’m Tracy. I’m an alcoholic.
We run Asbury Big Book group. I’m located in Cincinnati. We are in the Tri-state, so this one’s actually out of Kentucky. But yeah, we’ve been. We were listed for about 6 weeks. We started experiencing the problem, maybe week 2. And it was the racial, child holding a gun to his head, the bullying. So yeah, we recently delisted. And now I’m here.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Welcome. Glad you’re here. Janine

[Janine Rialto, Ca]
Yes, I’m from a group from San Fernando Valley in California. We’re called Shoulder to Shoulder. And we’re strictly online. We did get listed, and then had a lot of bombers, and it was kind of overwhelming. So we delisted for the time being, but I think we’re looking for a solution. I hear you’ve got a solution for us.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Okay. Excellent Janine. Glad you’re here. Kathleen.

[Kathleen D Massachusetts]
Hi Kathleen alcoholic. My meetings, we actually did not delist, but we saw the increase. I think we reported 41 in one night, but we also found a solution, and we haven’t had a bomber since. Just happy to pass along what I know at some point.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Wonderful, we’re gonna ask you to share that solution later. Thank you so much. Annie. Good afternoon. Good evening.

[Annie]
Annie, alcoholic. I’m in Ireland. We not only had to delist, we had to close. So we ran for about a year and 3 quarters, and then, when we listed we got worse, the bombers got worse, and we just didn’t have enough people to run the meeting with the amount of bombers. So with we probably about 20 would come in just as we were opening they’d all come in together. They used to put notices out and invite people to come in, and I was doing a lot of this on my own in the end. You know, we just really didn’t have people. Plenty people come into the meeting, but nobody, you know, taking host and co-host. So we ended up closing a year ago, but I’m really interested in this subject, because I want to educate myself so that I you know I know how to handle it. If I come up against it, again, cause I’m still in AA.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Excellent. Thank you, Annie. Thank you so much. Janine.

Janine, I’m gonna have to come back to you. Can’t hear you at all, my friend. You got a real bad connection or bad mic. Let’s try you back in a minute. Tony W.

[Tony W (Bournemouth Daily Online – UK)]
Oh, yeah, Tony, I’ll call it calling from the Uk representing the Daily Group. We’ve been operating for about 2 and a half years now, we’re a medium size group. Really, we’ve got a lot of attendance across 7 days. We engage with the OIAA listing and immediately we started getting problems with zoom bombers, which was a very rare occurrence before we existed with it for 2 or 3 weeks, this is last summer, before delisting. I think it was in August we delisted and the problem immediately went away.

The 2 take aways from us. The first one in terms of, I hate to say it, they appeared to almost all be from your side of the pond. We very rarely got any anyone that seems to be UK based who was bombing us, so it seems to be a bit of a an international problem, suddenly from the from the US, unfortunately. The second point was really the decision to delist was taken after 2 or 3 weeks of trying various measures. None of which were completely successful, and it was actually the excess loads for newcomers, which was the reason we delisted in the end because the guys who were broader, shoulder, more sobriety. They they were fairly comfortable with dealing with zoom bombers, but it was actually the newcomers who were turning away because they fell unsafe.  So our decision was based on the accessibility for newcomers which we don’t actually stall to get new comes in without being listed I have to say so.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Tony. I’m going to take 4 more, and then we’re gonna get it over to Tom. So let’s go to Merk. Then I’m gonna try you again Janine.

[Merk]
Yeah, hi, yeah, we we delisted. This is, I’m with a Florida group.
And we went online. And I mean, we ran an online group for a long time. But we went public, and then we delisted right away. But we were operating with our screen share open, and we have since shut that off, and I’m wondering what a difference that might make.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Merk. Amy

[Amy]
Hi! I’m from Seattle, and we have a joint Seattle, San Francisco online. Only group that I became treasurer of a while ago, and we were looking to extend. And well I was. And you know it’s a small group, 20 people and but so I heard about what was going on with the local Seattle group online. With this with this listserv, and so I’m really interested in the topic, you know, I’m a member of the LGBT community, and I see there’s a lot of that in this this listserv, and you know I don’t think I have the support, for in my meeting to like fight this. But I’m really interested in the topic, and also I just wanna pose a question for what? Whenever, if and when you get to it is, you know, the legalities of this like, are these people prosecutable? Because obviously it’s a concerted effort. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you. Amy. Janine, let’s try again. See if we can hear you.

[Jeanine F]
Yes, alcoholic named Bernie. I’m under Janine’s listing. We’re here together, my home group is Silver-start. out of Seacliff Long Island. We average it on the average about a 100 to 120 people every morning. We have problems with zoom bombers also. But what our group does is we have gatekeepers that kind of patrol, the rooms and patrol who comes in, who doesn’t come in. When we’re dealing with this subject,  I must remind us this, this quorum here today, the first page in a third tradition. Okay. We cannot close the doors of alcoholics anonymous. These people are sick. Yeah. But they still might need the rooms. AA, we can’t close them out, you know. That’s unfortunately, we’re dealing with 2023.This is the world we’re in. If we’re originally about it, it works. And I, I recently reported this a zoom bomber, and I got some feedback from Zoom, and answer that things really quieted down. Just steps to follow through with 3, 4. So there are different techniques that you can do. It’s gonna be a 100%. Nothing is a 100% in this world. But this is the digital platform that we’re dealing with. It’s a beautiful growth for AA as time goes, I’m sure it’ll be ironed out more and more. But just be vigilant. Thanks, for let me share.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 14:20:46
Thank you, Bernie. And so we’re gonna try and help everybody with today. Martin

[Martin M.]
Hi! I’m Martin M. I’m an alcoholic. I’m the webmaster for Queens intergroup. We, my whole group has been getting bombed, lately, but we have locked all the microphones upon entry, we don’t allow anybody to unmute themselves. We unmute people. We ask for control. We shut down the chat because one time we got bombed and somebody puts up something expletive in there, and it was there through the whole meeting. But we did have one group in Queens so far has been delisted because a gentleman was on there self abusing himself and they’re still trying to figure out whether they’re gonna come back on or not.
I did invite them to this meeting and I did offer to give them a little class on how to help prevent the bombing or help with it.
That’s it for me. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Alright. Thank you, Martin. We’re gonna take one more from Germany, and Mark. And then we’re gonna get over to Tom

[Mark L, Germany]
Yeah. Mark, alcoholic. We took off one group in Augsburg from from the listing, because it was too much, and we didn’t have the personnel that co-hosts all really trained out, and one of the other meetings that we have in in Munich. Though, is heavily frequented by zoom bombers and we’re we’re trying to best with with better security and co-host. But you know it feels like sometimes we push pushing shit up hill, and thanks for the initiative. It’s really good to be here. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Glad you’re here, Mark. Thank you everyone for those opening remarks and comments I’m grateful to hear from you. We’ll hear from more of you towards the back end of the session, as I said, we’ll stay long as long as people need to talk. We’ll stick around for a while tonight,.

So I hear 3 clear things. Lack of maybe knowledge, lack of training, lack of people. Probably the top 3. So we’re going to start with the knowledge. Tom’s going to provide a lot of knowledge for us here tonight through his Zoom Security Guide. Tom’s an expert in the field. He’s been running his Zoom Security Guide, today or yesterday,
he released version 10 of that Security Guide. He is constantly updating it and keeping it fresh and relevant to what’s happening with zoom and with recovery on zoom.

As I said, we also will have Melinda, I’ll ask her to put it in the chat again. We have a sign-up form. If you are interested in joining the OIAA Zoom support team, maybe we can help you with those other 2 items getting you some training. Maybe even some people. So, Tom, I’m gonna spotlight you and I would love you to take it away my friend.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Thank you, and the first thing I want to do is turn off spotlight for me. I mean mirrors I’m fine with actually, I stand in front of one most of the day just kidding. Just okay. Hi, everyone. I’m Tom, I am alcoholic, and I just happen to be, although this meeting I want to make it real clear, because we may be talking about outside issues from time to time. We are not within the circle and triangle at the moment of any fellowship. We can’t be, because we have to talk about a topic that bridges the gap between what we’re trying to do is recovery, and the world and the Internet.

So I think you know probably the most important question, and I do want to talk about why can’t the guide be downloaded? I’m asked that all the time. Why can’t I print the guide? And someone mentioned legalities? And who are zoom bombers. I’m gonna cover a lot of that. And I’m also gonna talk about the guide. But I think more importantly, before I think you’ll be able to really hear me. Who the hell is this guy that they all have on here? And that’s gonna be telling me what to do about my zoom settings. You know. I think you need to, maybe if I can just qualify for a few minutes and tell you just a little bit about me, I think it would be time well spent.

I am a computer geek. I have been online for most of my life, even when I was a teenager, since the at least the early eighties I’ve been hacking, I was literally pulled out of my math classes when I was in high school and was put into a computer lab and I learned how to program computers and binary. I’m really good with that sort of thing. I made a career out of it. I now am fortunate, fortunate, to have multiple sclerosis, and I also have something called complex regional pain syndrome, where my left leg feels like it’s on fire 24¬†hours a day. I live in that much pain, but I’ve also been permanently disabled because of it since 2006. So that gives me all the time in the world to be of service with the knowledge that I know about computers so I stay up on that.

I am, I’ve been a member, and I’ve been online in alcoholics anonymous since I originally got sober in 1987, and also I’m also a double winner in Alanon. I have 35 years in that program, and I’m about to turn 31 if I make it to February 10 in AA. I’ve been doing physical and digital, I call them digital meetings. I do not call them virtual, because the word virtual means fake, and there is literally nothing fake about this. I see real people getting real help and get real lives are getting really saved. And the real message is getting really carried. And people are really doing the steps. And really recovering, you know, they’re getting this thing.

I have learned a long time ago that the platform doesn’t matter. The message is what matters, and so I am really excited almost about the fact that you know now, unfortunately, I know we all went through this hell of a pandemic in our own way, but if there’s one silver lining, it’s that I’d say before the pandemic 95% of the people in in in recovery, had no idea that there were meetings online. And now I would dare to say that at least 95% of the people in recovery, whether they like it or not. Know about online meetings. So that is a plus. And we are a fellowship in a collection of fellowships, doesn’t matter which twelve-step fellowship, that has a has a knack for making lemonade out of just about any lemons we’re handed. All of our fellowship histories are proof of that.

So I’m a guy that’s been online a long time. I am an old lamplighter which is one of the original AA online groups. I run another online history research group called AA history lovers, I’m the fourth curator in its 23 year existence. It has over 37,000 members online on 2 platforms. We deal with the, you know, Internet trolls we deal with people trying to start trouble and all that. But we we roll with it, we deal with it. We move on because we never forget our primary purpose, and that’s what’s so important about all of this.

Now Zoom happened to be the platform of choice when the pandemic started, and even though I’ve been going online, and I still go online on many different platforms, if you only knew how big online AA really was, people think that the membership of alcoholics anonymous i’m gonna speak about AA, just to make it easy, has plateaued since the 90’s. It’s just today its never counted the digital realms, they’ve never actually counted that there are so many platforms around the world. I can name a bunch of them off the top of my head. I mean, there’s Discord, Internet Relay Chat. Usenet is still going. I mean, I could go on and on and on with Zoom, only being one of them.

But this is the platform that was chosen when the pandemic started. You know, popular opinion. We just all gravitated to it. Let me tell you a few things about Zoom and I’m gonna explain what a Zoom bomber usually is. And I don’t even call them zoom bombers, and my guide.

I call them disruptors, because I think that’s more accurate I don’t like the word bomber. It’s just not a friendly word, and when you find out who they mostly are, they’re not bombing anything. They’re being disruptive they need to be grounded. Basically, most of them are children. We’ll talk about that in a moment. What? Well, how do I wanna put this? Let’s see.

We all started to use zoom at the beginning of the pandemic right, Zoom is a platform that’s been around for well, over a decade. Actually it was already around. But Zoom was aimed at the corporate environment. It was aimed for colleges, hospitals, big businesses that wanna have, you know, mainly for internal use. It was meant for companies that had an IT department and information technology department, who have their own IT guys. And it wasn’t ever really meant to be downloaded and used by end users, especially people who may not be familiar with technology like some of us. Our hearts are in it. Pandemic started. We can’t go and meet in person. We gotta do this thing. Everybody seems to be using Zoom I want to try. I want to be of service, so I go to zoom.us, or one of the other sites, and I download the client. I install it, and I find out I’m getting blown up as soon as I start a meeting. Where are all these people coming from that are trying to disrupt my meeting? And how are they getting in? Well, it’s because Zoom never expected anything like this. Just like we didn’t expect a pandemic. Neither did they.

So by default, especially in 2020, when the Zoom client was downloaded. It was wide open, un-configured, because Zoom assumes that you that whoever downloaded it had an IT department, or somebody with technical prowess that would configure and lock down the client to suit their organization and so we kinda got caught up in that. Well, being that I’m a computer geek and an IT professional, even though I’ve been disabled permanently since 2006. And I do other things, too. If you look behind me, there’s another thing I do sometimes and I’ve been very fortunate to travel the world doing that as well, and I’ve used online meetings to stay grounded, no matter where I am in the world so maybe we’ll talk about that later. But the point I need to make is, I want to tell you the evolution of what’s been happening and why things are the way they are and where they’re headed. Because I know, because I’ve been at the absolute core of this.

In February of 2020, I wrote version one of the Zoom Security guide, the URL of which is on the OIAA website. But here it is in the chat as well. Everybody should bookmark this. You don’t have to do it now you’ll get it later. But you should bookmark this because it’s always gonna be there. It’s never gonna be anywhere else, at least for the foreseeable future. And I’ll explain why it has to be there, and only there in a in a minute, let me get through this real quick though.

I wrote this thing, I found out that there was a lot of need just like we just found out that there were a lot of people interested in in this event today it was like that too, in 2020,. I created an email address, Tom R 021092, which is my sobriety date @Gmail and I tacked it on there, and I dedicated it to it, and and as of this date I stopped counting it over 100,000 emails I’ve received and I’ve answered every single one of them since the Pandemic started. The first year of the Pandemic, sometimes 22¬†hours a day.

Lucky for me. I’m in pain. I only get like 2¬†hours of sleep a day, anyway, and I have no Circadian rhythm. Lucky you I’m available to to help. I’m answering emails or I’m helping groups literally walking them through their settings where we would get on using screen sharing and different ways. And this is also what I’m saying to any of you who are scared still about the Zoom Platform. I hope you won’t be at the end of today, because the main point is I am available for you. I’m here to help.

So let let me finish what I was gonna say, though, but the the evolution of how this all went down, this thing blew up big time, and as time went on Zoom started to realize, oh, my God, we have some serious security problems. So I was able to actually start attending internal zoom security meetings, even though I’m not a Zoom employee representing, one of the representations of the voice of recovery, and what we need because they didn’t understand us at all. They didn’t understand the concept that we need to be as open as possible, so that newcomers can get in and find us while still being secure, to keep out the Zoom bombers. So it was a real balancing act, especially in the beginning. And so a lot of talk, a lot of compromises and a lot of changes to the Zoom client had to take place.

Those of you who haven’t been around a while. There was a time it was about what maybe 18 months ago, for example, where they were going to force both pass codes and waiting rooms on everybody which would have literally blown up most meeting directories, if because any meeting that didn’t have a passcode after April the first was going to be required to have one, and nobody’s going to get their directories updated that fast and and get the word out, especially to newcomers. And so a lot of meetings were going to go dark overnight, because I was able to be one of the people that was blessed to be able to explain that to zoom and that’s how the compromise was that you can have waiting room or pass code or both you just can’t have neither. Compromises are made, the company is listening, and as new issues come up and new exploits are found and there have been some new ones, one particularly annoying.

I don’t know if any of you saw the one with the bouncing around in the windows and so you can’t get them. I’m gonna tell you how to how to fix that one before we leave today. And you know it’s a cat and mouse game just like it is with anything else on the Internet. You know, we are online. And that is a fact. But we are very secure platform compared to what we were. Now that doesn’t mean anything if we’re not configured correctly. Like I said, even today, out of the box, when you download zoom for the first time, or you download it, install it and run your meeting for a while, and you get lucky and nobody finds you, one of the the disruptive people, it may appear that everything’s great, until one day everything just explodes and you get flooded with all these people in your waiting room, and you don’t know who they are. If you even have your waiting room turned on. And how do you deal with it? How do you get rid of it? Well, realizing that individual members of recovery groups don’t have IT departments, I wrote the guide as your virtual.. cause that’s fake because I’m not your real IT guy. But the guide, represents like, what if you did have an IT department? What would they do?

So I wrote this thing, and I’m gonna actually put it on the screen here real quick, because I want to show you a few things. And yes, today I am announcing a milestone. It’s had 10 major rewrites, and it’s in Beta right now, because I would literally stay the full night last night getting this fixed, as much as I could, but I know there’s a few more things I want to add to it before I release it in full as a 10.0 without the beta, but in the special announcement about today and a screenshot of OIAA’s page. And it says, here your virtual IT department, in the form of a Google Doc.

There’s a few things I want to talk about and explain how this guide can work for you to help you configure your Zoom. So that even if you do get a few disruptors, you can easily handle them, because they can’t flood you the way that they used to. Now this guide is actually 3 guides. I kind of wrote it in a way where it’s designed so you if if you don’t want all this information, it’s like 20 pages, and you don’t want all this overload, you can actually choose to just use option number 3 here, which is basic. And it explains exactly how to do it. It’s just the instructions, you don’t care why you just want to go into your zoom settings in your in in your browser, and you want to be able to just set everything so that you don’t have to worry about this so much. You would follow the basic path and the instructions on how to do that are here. If you want a complete understanding of the kind of an overview blanket understanding of what the problems are and and how we’re solving them as a group together you would follow the complete path. Or if you notice some of the text is bold and some of it isn’t. See how that’s not bold. That’s optional. This is bold. You read it. If you start at the top, and you only read the bold text. For example, look at this paragraph, please spread this guide around as it fixes Zoom Meetings, that’s a complete sentence, so you can skip the unbold parts and just read the bold, and you can rapidly zoom through this thing, pun intended, and you can get a basic overview that’s complete. That gives you a basic understanding of what’s going on. And then there is the thorough version where you just simply read it from top to bottom.

Okay, so it’s 3 guides, all layered on top of each other. You decide how deep you want to get into this. If you just wanna fix your meeting again, do the basic. If you just want complete, you don’t want to get all into the why too much, you just want to know what, then you would choose that path, and just read the bold alright. So it goes on, and then I have a more on what the guide is. It explains itself, and then there’s an urgent news section, and in fact, we do have a piece of urgent news that I don’t know if you, any of you have noticed that lately there’s been a problem with glitchy screens sometimes someone will turn their video on and it’s just glitching like crazy. Right? Well, these are the instructions on how to permanently fix it one account at a time. It has to do with a de-noise function that does what’s called video de-noise. If you have a pretty poor quality web camera and you’re in low, light, it’s you’re getting all those little dots Zoom tries to clean that up using a Denise filter which is broken. And so this tells you how to turn it off, and so you you’ll always find this urgent new section which I will update, live whenever urgent news comes in. When it’s not so urgent anymore, it drops down to the announcement and news section here.

Right here I found a great presentation zoom did on how to do hybrid meetings. That was all the way back in August of 2022. I still love it. So here it is. You can click it here, and and you can watch the video. And also I mentioned here things like the request, permission to unmute feature. Now I talk about it, I explain it, and you can decide whether or not you want to use it. These are just examples. Things rotate in and out as issues come up. We talk about them in here when there’s problems, I try to offer solutions. I rely heavily on people emailing me, telling me what’s wrong with your group. Not only will I come help you fix it if needed, I will even try to attend your meeting if necessary, so I can see the problem for myself, and I’ll work with you to fix it. So you literally need to know you’re not alone. You’re not alone with your problems when you’re having issues with your with your meetings.You’ve got this guide as a resource. You’ve got me. You’ve got online intergroup. (OIAA) And and there are others out there, too, that are more than willing to help you.

We just have to realize that we are in a Renaissance. In fact, I think I honestly believe that we are all at the ground floor of a fourth legacy. I believe this is that big, and I’ll give you one example why I think it’s that big. Without technology, it is not possible. We have general service conferences around the world, right? Like New York every every year has a General Service Conference, where all the delegates from the areas they go from Canada and and the United States, they go, and they do advisory actions, and most people don’t know this. But there are 66 more GSOs around the world. New York’s only one of them. There are 67 GSOs, currently, each one of them autonomous. However, they do send trustees together and have a world, I forget what they call it, but it’s kinda like a General Service conference, but they don’t actually make any decisions, nor do they do any advisory actions. They all just basically try to get on the same page and help each other but they really don’t have the resources to do it. And they were literally flying around the world, which is very expensive, and some of these GSOs couldn’t afford to go. So with technology, it would technically be possible for, let’s just say, each General Service Conference to a point, a world service delegate or to vote for one elect one. And those World Service delegates, 67 of them, plus whoever, could get together. And we could actually have something like a World Service Conference on a platform like Zoom and do advisory actions at the level of planet. For the first time. So big if you think about it. So see, this could be a whole new frontier for alcoholics synonymous where we can finally become a worldwide organization for the first time.

So we’re gonna let zoom bombers get to us? No way, no way. So when people email me their problems, I get to try to help them, I can even go to Zoom and find out what can be done about it. Things get fixed, and then I’m also willing to help you in train. We will do that, and the guide gets updated constantly, constantly. So if you want to skip all that, even if you take the basic option it’ll send you to page 7. Right here. Start here for the core, guide itself, and remember that you do have the choice to just read and follow only the bold parts if you just want to get through the proper account set up in settings without the full descriptions, you can even do that here. You can skip all this and just read the bold, read the bold, see, look at that fold, and here you are. Your configuration. So let’s begin. What you do is you take this, and then you go into your zoom account settings. If you have a pro, or above, because free accounts cannot be configured. Global settings. It’s one of the limitations, and Zoom is fair in doing that. The free accounts are only meant if you’re hosting for a 40¬†min basic meeting with like family, friends, it’s not meant for this. If you want to get real about it, you gotta pay the $16 a month to have a 100 limit pro account at least. But if you do, you go in and you bring those up in your web browser, and then you can use this on a different device, or you can in another window. If you have a big enough monitor and you simply log in, do what it says here tells you how to log in, and then you simply go to your settings. Your goal account settings, and you go down the line security subsection, and you look for waiting room, and you read what it’s about, and you make the decision.

I recommend what to do here to be safe, and if you disagree well, I’ll tell you what might happen to you if you disagree. But at least you’ll be informed. And then you go to the next one. Turn off all these meeting, pass codes personal meeting IDs! What no password? That’s right. Passwords actually have been cracked from day one. They do not protect your meeting. They don’t. The disruptors are able to crack pass codes within seconds, so they really don’t do any good. But if you configure your zoom account to the degree that this guide will help you easily, do simply by walking through this. And matching it up with your own account, and setting it the way the guy asks you to. You’ll have your account pretty much locked down. Then it’s a simple matter of what you do once you’re inside the meeting, and we even talk about that.

Okay. So I hope I’m being clear I’m gonna take questions later. And if anything needs to be re-explained and like I said, you got me all day. I have, I I kept the whole day open for you. So that’s basically what you’re doing. You’re simply going down and anything that isn’t mentioned like if I skip over like, say, only authenticated users can join meetings from web client. And I say, enable, turn it on and say, allow use of end to end encryption is 3 down from that on the website. It means that the 2 in between don’t mean anything in terms of security, so only the things that pertain to security are in this guide. Okay, so and and I just fixed it this morning to put them back in, or because Zoom keeps shuffling them around. So 10 beta is current, and you should be able to literally walk right through and configure any zoom account. That’s gonna keep out most of these disruptors.

Now, that is just about a basic idea of what it is. See all the tabs in meaning advanced, is there? And then here’s the sub tabs. Recording. If you don’t want to record, do this, if you do want to record, do this, and I recommend local recording, I explain why you don’t want to use Cloud, if you can help it. But people sometimes need cloud. I explain what’s good there. You don’t want automatic recording for recovery meetings, obviously because we want to be careful. And then audio conferencing tells you what to do. Team chat, zoom apps. Whiteboard is probably the worst feature for recovery meetings Zoom has ever come up with, because it is so bugged. I recommend just turning it off, leaving it off, because any participant can start a whiteboard and draw things. You don’t want to use it, at least not now. I also recommend turning off Zoom Apps. And the reason for that is because Zoom Apps are Zoom’s attempt to write open up their platform, their client, so that third parties, other companies can write plugins for zoom that do various things.

Some people have already found some of the timers, there are on screen timers which are nice and fun and cool, and all. But you can’t just use the timer without enabling the whole platform, and there’s a lot of really bad code and a lot of code that isn’t really, we don’t know if it’s safe yet. Its just, it’s too new. So I explain all of that in here, and if you still want to use it, you can. But at least you’ll be informed when something goes wrong. What probably blew up. It was because I left the Zoom Apps on. One of the exploits, the bouncing around the screen one that’s driving everybody crazy lately. That’s because of Zoom Apps. That’s because of Zoom Apps, and also people who are raising their hand and lowering it, raising their hand and lowering it. And a third way they do it is by constantly renaming themselves, using a program, a hacking program. So by the time you find them in the in the participants list, they’ve already renamed themselves to something else, and the list keeps reshuffling and you can’t find anybody.

I’m gonna explain how to deal with all of this stuff today. If you’ll let me. And then, if you follow all that congrats, your Zoom account is now configured for basic operation. But we’re not done just yet. More considerations. I talk about scheduling meetings. You wanna make sure that your scheduled meeting settings match your global settings right? You don’t want to override your global settings and go back to some of the bad stuff that they can drive a truck through. And then here’s some recommendations for what you can do during the meeting I talk about the safety shield and things like that. I’m gonna greatly expand this section soon, but it’s complete as is, its just there’s more I think I can help with. So I’m gonna work on that, probably for version 11 and there’s a waiting room guide here so you can learn more about the waiting room. I talk about the importance of Gallery view, some of the better ways to manage and secure your meeting, to be able to watch for disruptions and I’m sure there’ll be questions like, oh, someone comes in how can I get rid of them fast. I’ll explain all of that as soon as we get to Q&A, and it just goes on. I want you to explore this guide, but if anything here doesn’t make any sense, I want you to know you can email me. I’m also not afraid to give you my phone number. People can call me and I will help you any way I can. Okay, let’s see, I’m gonna go ahead and stop share for just a moment.

Okay. Now I’d like to quickly explain what is zoom typical zoom bomber looks like, okay. He looks like anywhere from a 10 to 14 year old brat that’s living in a basement. Mom’s basement okay. Daddy’s at work, and he’s hacked the password to his laptop or found it written on the post it note in the desk. He’s on there, with his buddies, hanging out on Twitter, Discord and they have these little groups. They call them raids. I’m not gonna well, sure. Go look at one if you want, #zoomcodes on Twitter. There’s one. What happens is there are these tools they’re called port scanners. Well, I’m not gonna get too technical. I’ve spent as a consultant and an IT director when I was able to work, explaining to entire companies how to turn on their monitor so don’t worry, okay, I’m not gonna get too technical. But there’s these these programs called Port Scanners, and what they do, they don’t attack the Zoom meetings directly they scan the Zoom servers. Looking for meetings that aren’t configured correctly.

See the best defense against these disruptors is to have your meeting configured correctly, because what will happen is these, they call them scouts, will come in to your meeting looking like a normal user, and they will see am I allowed to unmute myself during the meeting, is the Chat set to everybody, you know. Can I have video in my virtual background? What kind of jerk can I be? And once they figure that out, they will then go to Twitter and they’ll go #zoomcodes, I found one! And they’ll post the code and that’s when you get the rush. That’s how they all know to show up at the same time. It all starts with your Zoom account, not being properly configured. See, that’s what makes this zoom security guide the foundation that’s gonna help you. Because if your if your account is configured, they’re gonna come. They’re gonna look. And then they’re gonna go look for greener pastures. It’s just too difficult for them. They’re not gonna have any fun with you. It’s the ones they can flood, and they know that you’re powerless to stop them that that they have the fun, their quote fun with.

Okay. I also need you all to understand that these are kids. And I would never throw stones in a glass house. I was a brat, too, you know, not just on online, but I threw rocks at cars my sponsor knows about a whole lot of things I did when I was a kid that weren’t very pleasant, and you know, this is just the modern version of that. That doesn’t change the fact that we are trying to have life saving meetings. But looking at it this way, if you have a physical meeting, and someone comes in drunk, or high and they start throwing food around. And they start interrupting, what are we gonna do? We’re gonna handle it. We’re gonna handle it in a loving way. If we have to boot them out for a day, we will. And say, Look, the common welfare comes first. We’re gonna use the traditions on it. Well the traditions work here, too. If we have to boot them for a day, then we boot them for a day. We don’t worry about it. We just move forward because we have to. Our common welfare comes first, and we’re doing some life saving stuff here.

Just because, hopefully, the pandemic is ending, doesn’t mean there’s no need for this. Qnline AA has been huge for a long time, for a reason. There are loners. There are people who are disabled there are people geriatric, who can’t drive to meetings. Not only that, but it’s quickly becoming evident that these are eco-friendly as well. Right. We can also go to 5 meetings on 5 continents in 5¬†hours with 5 mouse clicks. So it’s really cool to be able to travel around the world and to see, you know, and experience Alcoholics Anonymous anywhere. What I found being able to travel, online AA, I can’t get to my Sunday Hollywood home group, which I now host their hybrid for them. That I’ve been going to since the late 80’s in person, but now that they’re online, hybrid, I happen to be in Seattle at the moment, even though we also live in L.A. and when I’m in Seattle, I can run the meeting, no problem. No matter where I’m at. And when I’m touring or traveling, I can get to my online home groups. I run, the only English speaking meeting in the world in Kiev Ukraine for them. So that it stays offshore. So that tradition one is protected, no matter what, that meeting opens, no matter what, if the power goes out the meeting still opens.

And something else that’s really cool. I know of a prison meeting, a panel that goes into a prison where the you know you got to go through the background checks, and if you’re a felon you can’t get in. So that means like the people who want to go talk to the inmates, before technology, couldn’t get in. So Ex-cons couldn’t go back in and talk. So you get these people who’ve never been to jail, never been to prison, and you know, clean record, not even a parking ticket. They’re going in. They’re talking about, you know. They had a piece of rum cake, and their life became unmanageable to these inmates. Right you need, sir. Like, Oh, yeah, you’re convincing us. But now with Zoom, for example, I know of meetings, and this is a growing movement inside corrections. People who are doing H. and I. and corrections institution work can go into these institutions now, using digital means and actually talk and say, hey, I was in there. Remember me, and I’m on the outside now, and a much more powerful message is being carried.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, this is worth fighting for! And any problem that’s going on with security is a solvable one. It’s just that. It’s just the Internet it’s cat and mouse, cat and mouse. A new exploit’s gonna come up, report the exploit to me. Report it to Zoom. We’re gonna work overtime to figure out a way around it and we’re gonna help you fix it. If your group, if you feel you don’t have enough technological prowess to know how to handle disruptions, I am more than happy to come to your group and and give you a training session, I’ll spend an hour or 2 with you and your group at a business meeting, call a meeting, schedule me I’m more than happy to show up and and and talk you through it, and and answer any questions you have. I’ll show you how to mitigate a different problems.

In other words, have you tried everything before you left the OIAA Directory? Did you really try everything? Only you know that if you really are, your wits end. And this just isn’t for you. I get that. There’s so many ways to be of service in Alcoholics Anonymous. You don’t necessarily have to do this, but if you can’t tell me you’ve tried everything, and you see the potential in how many more people we’ll be able to reach. And the diversity and the inclusion that all to me mentally, this can provide. Then we gotta work together and we gotta work our way through this.

So you know, I’m sure we’ll get on some more topics now, but I’ve given you the introduction to who I am. I’ve given you a basic overview of the purpose of the Security Guide. And how about we take some questions or some comments? And oh, one last thing, though, if you know, like somebody mentioned, I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name, that you had a way of dealing with a certain type of disruption, and now everything’s great email me we’ll tell the group. Please. But email me and tell me what it is if it’s not in the Security Guide. Please let me know, and I will add it to the guide, and we can help everybody forthwith. Okay?

So remember, AA is a team sport. We are the world’s longest short bus. That is true, but together we can go anywhere.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
But, Tom, before you do before we start calling hands? Let’s take a two-minute break. I want to thank Tom for that excellent presentation. Thank you so much. I wanna thank the entire service team that’s here today. And I lost all their names from my list where’d they go. But Melinda and Dave, and Jennifer and Marcel and Jan. Thank you all.

There’s been a lot of chat that we’ve sent out. There are links too. There’s an email out there. If you want to request any of the information from today. The audio recording, the transcript, you can email forums@aa-intergroup.org. We’ll probably look to get everything linked up on our website, and we’ll point you to that page. So give us a day or so, but we’ll get back to all your emails. I think you should all have a link to the Security Guide by now, if you don’t that link is on the website, too. And I think that’s it –  say it again, Tom.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
There it is again in chat.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
There it is again in chat. Thank you, Tom. So if you don’t have the Security Guide, click that link and make sure you bookmark it in your browser. All right. So we’ve been here for an hour. We still have over 500 people here. It’s amazing. Thank you for coming. We’re gonna start calling hands. Try to keep your questions and your comments to, you know, say, 20, 30¬†seconds. We’ll try to give you a good, quick response, and we’ll try to get to as many views possible today. Okay. Coach Anthony.

[Coach Anthony]
Hey? Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the hosting for organizing this, Tom. Thank you for your service, man. This is awesome Zoom Guide. I haven’t had a chance to look through it completely, but anyway, I had my question revolves around a couple scenarios.

I’ve been in a meeting where a club has you know, they’ve established the Gmail account. They set up with, you know they a Zoom account, and that’s the account that’s used to to log in. But then, as a host now I’m logging in through the club account, and not my personal account. So that’s one scenario. And then the other scenario is when I’ve been on other type meetings where there is, you know, everyone who has the credentials can just log in. There’s no tech no quote unquote host per se. And so on, that scenario like, if I’m using, you know, if I’m on my personal computer, I guess when you talk about changing the configuration. Well, on personal of desktop, or whatever is, you know. How does that impact my usage of Zoom outside of AA, for example, if that makes sense.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It does. And okay, so 2 part question, part one is, yes, there has to be a host account, because that’s the account that has to like pay to get to pro so that they can have all these features. Right, because you can’t configure these global settings without a pro account or above. And so everybody has to use that account. If you’re a poor recovery group like every one I’ve ever been a member of right and we can only afford a single host single user account. We’re all gonna kind of share that, you know password, and only a few people have that password. And anyone who wants to host a meeting has to log in through that account, yes. Your personal account, that you use to to to log in and even if you’re co-hosted, can be a free account as long as you’re not hosting you’re not subject to the 40¬†min limit, it doesn’t matter what your security settings are. It only matters what the host account settings are. So that’s part one, and geez what was part 2 again. Just give me a real brief. My MS brain sometimes..

[Coach Anthony]
Oh, no, that’s okay. But and God bless you! My wife has MS, so I know what you’re going through.
The second part was, does like in terms of this, this, the the configurations, if I am hosting a meeting on my own personal computer and and how does those? Does those changes to those configurations disrupt my usage of Zoom outside of AA?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
No, because your personal account is a completely separate account. Every single zoom account has to be configured on its own. They are all independent, autonomous entities. So if you configure your host account for your home group, and then you use your own personal account. They’re 2 completely different things. So no there’s no conflict there.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Anthony. He’s good. Let’s go to Bruce T.

[Bruce T]
Hey? Thank you. I’m I’m Bruce. I’m alcoholic.
Thank you so much for your presentation for this meeting and everything. We’ve been online since March of of 2020. We do 5 meetings a week. We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of meetings, and we have a bunch of people that watch the screen. We have set most of the settings that you suggest, and and actually, you know, we get bombed on occasion but I think you know we’re pretty good. We’re certainly nowhere near driving ourselves offline and thanks for your comments about being available to the alcohol who still suffers. We’ve been password free and publicly posted since we started, for that very reason, and we’ve resisted any changes along those lines, because we’re concerned people won’t find the meeting. I had a couple of quick questions, you mentioned the the bomber that, or the disruptor that jumps around a lot we’ve had that recently.

We don’t have apps turned on, and they can’t rename themselves. So they’re not doing that. So they’re probably raising and lowering their hand rapid.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Here’s the ready…

[Bruce T]
So my question, I’m sorry. Are you just trying to say some

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I said, here’s the fix, you ready. It’s simple.

[Bruce T] 15:09:11
Yeah. Go ahead.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Go to your participants, and in your find a participant box just type. The first 3 letters of their name, like, say their name is Ralph. No offense. If there’s a Ralph in the room, I don’t think you’re a zoom bummer. I’m just saying, and Ralph will be up and that won’t move, even though they’re flying around your gallery view. That won’t move, and through that you can then go ahead, and the first thing you always want to do with the zoom bombers is stop their video.  Always do that because once you stop their video they can’t restart it again without permission. So that’s the first thing you can do to mitigate is to turn off that darn porno movie right? And or whatever, hopefully they’re not doing worse. But do that. So simply by using that participant search box there, you can kind of freeze them in place when they’re flying around doing that thing. Okay?

[Bruce T]
What about using a focus mode? Is that something you recommend?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
No, not at all, because focus mode of that’s a whole nother animal. In fact, I talk about it in the Zoom Security Guide.
And and what I basically say is, stay away from it.

[Bruce T]
Okay. Well.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah. But though this is the quickest way when you have someone coming in your room, or even more than one, and they’re doing this, you just you basically just go to your participant window, there, and that you should have open anyway, if you’re hosting, or you’re running security or co-host, and type in just enough to freeze their name in your participants list. And that way you can go in there, stop their video first and hopefully, you don’t have unmutes turned on. That shuts them up, too. And now you know, you got to disruptor in the room. Go ahead and temporarily lock down your chat right, and then you have all the time in the world to deal with them. Me. I personally like to let them stay, because maybe they’ll get sober.

[Bruce T]
I do want to ask you quickly about focus mode, I mean, doesn’t that temporarily prevent anybody else in the room from seeing their video? Wouldn’t that be a temporary solution to you know, if yeah.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Sure, but it’s disruptive to other people who may not want that. I mean, you’re basically putting the whole meeting through the ringer when you could just easily take take care of this without most people even noticing if they have the speaker on spotlight cause it’ll take the speaker out of spotlight at the same time, so I don’t recommend using it. It’s just disruptive.

[Bruce T]
Alright, I don’t want to take anymore of your time. You have a lot of hands up, but I do want to make one comment, and since you work with the Zoom people, there’s one thing that we think would be incredibly useful, and I don’t know if it’s possible, and that is to be able to see into the waiting room. If we could see the people before we let them in.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, yeah, that would be great. But the way Zoom works the video feed doesn’t get turned on until they are allowed in past the waiting room, and they have to turn on their own audio and it’s it’s for their own protection. Because they may be having a private conversation, or they might be doing. You know what I mean? That that actually came up and zoom opted not to do that for privacy reasons.

[Bruce T]
Oh too bad. Alright, thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, I know. I know.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks, Bruce, let’s go to Melissa. And then Connie, Melissa.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, sorry! Here you go, Melissa

[Melissa G]
Alright! Hi! I’m an alcoholic my name’s Melissa. On, I actually don’t really do the online meetings anymore. I’m just kind of doing this meeting to report back, because my meeting New but West, which had both 12:30 and 5:30 Zoom Meetings on the same zoom account might I add, has been having  5:30s been having a big problem with bombers. We’ve always had bombers, when I used to do, we have a spiritual, the person we call a spiritual bouncer, and we used to just throw them out. You know it has remove for meeting. I think we need to read your your manifesto. However, because because they’re

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Manifesto, haha. You know what I would love to attend to your meeting I’d like to see what’s going on. Could you send me the information?

[Melissa G]
Sure there’s one at 5 today I can on scroll your email in the text. Would you?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It’s also in the Zoom security Guide itself.

[Melissa G]
Alright. Okay. Oh, I got it. And it’s here already.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
But I’ll do that. I’ll put my email in again.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Yeah, I, put it. I put it in the chat for you, Tom.

[Melissa G]
It’s already here. Okay? But I have another question.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Sure.

[Melissa G]
Apparently the Zoom bombers have been changing their identity and assuming the identity of people in the meeting. And that’s very disturbing, because then they think they’re throwing out somebody they know. And apparently once you’re thrown out, you can’t get back in. That was the question I was asked to ask of you. Is there any way to stop them from assuming identities?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Not at this time, but it’s easy to see who they are. If you watch. They’re usually running a loop it’s a loop of a video because they use a screen capture utility to capture your little box, and they get about 10¬†s of you, and they loop it, and then they change their name to make it look like it’s you just sitting there. They’re pretty easy to spot if you’re paying attention.

[Melissa G]
Right. Okay, so it’s it doesn’t look like a real picture. It looks. There’s something wrong with the picture

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, it’s It just doesn’t look right. Yeah. Got a weird look to it? And I usually stop, you know. In that case. And so to get restarted again, and I’ll send them a message saying I stopped your video because I’m not sure you are who you say you are. Say something that only that person would know  please, if you know who they that person, if it’s a regular…

[Melissa G]
Right, see? I don’t. I’m so backward I don’t even know what stopping video is. So I think that must be something that was added.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, you, click, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is addressed in the Zoom security Guide as well.

[Melissa G]
Yeah, I’m sending out the Zoom Security Guide.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Everything, everything we’re talking about is in there.

[Melissa G]
Okay, alright, because we have a lot of people doing service are gonna have to read it.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yes, you become a master after going through this guide, you will understand these terms. What they mean. How do you

[Melissa G] 15:16:25
Okay, thank you so much. This was a great presentation I’m sending you the info for New but West at 5:00.

[Connie U-PA]
Hey, Tom, hey! Thank you. Tom, this has been so wonderful listening to you, and I have to tell you I’m I’m kind of a kindred spirit. Out of high school back in 1975. I was computer programer. So I programmed in binary hexadecimal and machine language and all that good stuff. So I remember how  to interpret hexadecimal. I mean, talk about the stupid, you know function of the brain. Other things I can’t remember, but that I can. I can read the holes in the punch cards.

So anyways, I, yeah, I I would like to talk to you further at some point time.

But what we’ve what we’ve been having. We have a lot of the functions.  I didn’t know this guide was there. I mean, we do have some reps that, they’ve had good intentions, but haven’t got to a lot of meetings. So I wanna try to rectify that because I didn’t know that you were there. We have been having trouble, though I think its a different thing. We have not been having run of the mill disrupters or bombers, whatever you want to call them. We have recognized the voice, and it’s a particular individual that attended our meeting. Attended our meeting sometime back, and so really got to know us very well. And they keep coming in. And it’s our particular host on Saturday that they want to come in and say, you know, where is Michelle? I don’t see Michelle. I love you, Michelle. I hate you, Michelle. You’re ugly, Michelle, I mean, it’s a very specific, and, like all the features that you’re talked about like we’ve had renaming turned off for 2 years because of them coming in and changing to somebody they know. But you know, this person has been part of our meeting, and those people. So we we try to keep them out. Sometimes they get in for a little bit. I had this week, I had the legitimate person name under, and they tried to come in under that same name, and the next day I had a different one.

We’ve gotten a few of the regular run of the mill bombers but It’s mostly these ones that are particularly targeting us. So this is maybe not something you want to discuss with me now. It might be something we should do more on an individual. But I’m really anxious to look at your recommendations on the settings. I think we have you know we’ve turned off the chat. We turned off the unmute function. They can’t rename themselves, and you know, in December you know, after doing this, It gets exhausting doing it day after day after day, and then there’s people that get upset with us because we have to verify them by saying you have to turn on your video. And then I tried to explain to some people this week like cause she was just asking about seeing video. It’s like, cause we get that asked all the time. Why don’t you tell them in the waiting room? Turn your video on? I said, that doesn’t do any good. But if we have people that have profile pictures that we recognize, that we can see, and they so far they haven’t learned how to… I’m sorry. The words not coming to me. You know they have to learn how to do that.

So they’re looking for people that don’t have a profile picture, and I’ve tried a little bit to educate the group. If you don’t have a profile picture how to do that, and how that might help us. So anyways, I’m just kind of throwing it out there. So you and other people can hear it and like I said, this might be more something that you and I should have an individual discussion because I don’t know that it’s the run of the mill, kind of thing, and I don’t want to take everybody else’s time up.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah sure no problem. Just contact me and we will definitely speak more about that.

[Connie U-PA]
Yeah, I mean, comment on any. That thing that you think might help other people.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Sure no problem. In fact this meeting right now is getting a few disrupters. It’s gonna happen. It all comes down to, just like it was mentioned by Mark, lack of knowledge, lack of training, lack of people. Once your meeting is trained and you get muscle memory on this stuff, it’s very very easy.

[Connie U-PA] 15:22:17
Yeah, absolutely. And we get we don’t have a large group.You know, we have like 20 to 30 people, but we’re a women’s meditation meeting, which I think its functions best at that size.  But we get new people every day, so I don’t want to exclude, you know, not let somebody in, because I don’t recognize them.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Well there are other tools to use. Like lock meeting we haven’t talked about. Under the security shield. These are things I talk to groups individually when I schedule, I train them, I walk them through the whole thing, and I show them how to use it and then it’s just a matter of practice. When the Kiev thing, when the war broke out, and the Kiev meeting blew up, it went from the 10 people they had to a 1,000 people overnight. I goto in there by a miracle, told them who I was, Michael handed me the keys to the account and I had that 1,000 person meeting under control in about 15 minutes.

Not because I’m special, it’s because I learned all this, the best practices, and I have the muscle memory. And anybody can do it.And it’s just like riding a bike. Do it again and it becomes real easy.

[Connie U-PA]
But but this is like you said in the beginning, and then I’m gonna shut up this is a whole different beast. When the quarantine came, I didn’t know about online meetings and apparently they’ve been going on for awhile, I knew about Zoom because I was doing training for therapy harp to play at bedside, and we used to do. We used to have harp lessons and play as a group together on zoom. So that’s what that’s what you what Zoom did years ago for this.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 15:24:31
Thank you Connie. John H.

[Jon H]
Hi thank you so much. John alcoholic. Mark thank you for arranging this wonderful meeting.You’ve set the bar very high for other committee heads in OIAA. We have different settings in my home group. But we go through a process, we turn the main room into a screening room and the actual meeting is in a break out room. This allows us to have all the settings that our group prefers, because it’s a group of alcoholics and no one can agree what the settings should be.

And Tom thank you for your excellent dDirectory, I really looked forward to all of this. But my question is, we report people all the time, who are trying to be disrupters, to Zoom and I follow up with the emails and descriptions of what happened, but then what happens? Because after that it’s all silence. Is it pointless to do this or should I keep doing this because one rock at a time we’re improving a situation?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Okay, well the program I work demands rigorous honesty so, I’m going to ask you a question. Do you feel better when you do it? Because that’s about the only benefit you’re going to get from doing that.

[Jon H]
No I’m trying to be useful to the group.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
My point is, they don’t have the staffing to handle each and every little report that’s happening al the time, they just don’t. What they do have are algorithms. Reporting does work because if enough people are reporting that IP address or that account, and the Zoom security Guide talks about requiring authentication, meaning somebody logged into a zoom account, even a free one, in order to join your meeting for that reason. Because it helps Zoom see the pattern because it points back to the same account, getting kicked out all the time that’s when they can investigate, but they have to allocate their resources. So. yes, it’s important, but you know a single report may not get you anywhere, but it is always good to report them. Yeah.

[Jon H]
Okay. Thanks. Again.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 15:26:51
Thanks, Jon. Lets go to Melissa, South Carolina.

[MeLisa F – South Carolina]
Everybody, Melissa, alcoholic, I want to say thank you like from the bottom of the language of the heart. I am a tech head. I didn’t know about you guys, and I’ve been in the formerly in person meetings with everybody battering me around like Connie was saying, Do this, do this, and I’m like. They say I don’t know what a browser is I don’t know what a client means it’s revealing technological fluency or not. And oh, my Lord, this is so awesome! I am so happy to be here, and the only thing I’ll say when the Zoom first started, and I was like, why are you guys even want Zoom? Cause of all the config. And oh, my Lord, anyways, but the point is so what me and my other tech head friend did a big meeting. We said, Okay, we’re going old school. Aa. We locked the room at 829. When this meeting starts at 8, 30. If you’re not here, you’re not getting into okay, because we gotta do so much right? And so that meeting is growing, the court doesn’t start late. The meeting starts at 8 30. The room is locked, dude. I don’t recommend it for all groups, I’m saying. That’s what me and my tech friends were like. We don’t know what to do, and we you know what I mean. We just tried something.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, you’re on autonomous. You can do what you want. Sure? Yeah.

[MeLisa F – South Carolina]
Right. We just didn’t know like we didn’t have a Zoom Security Guide written by the amazing Thom. We did it. But anyway, I cannot say how happy I am to be here from the technological perspective with this. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You are most welcome.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks, Melissa. Kathleen in Massachusetts.

[Kathleen D Massachusetts]
Everybody Kathleen, an alcoholic. I’m actually the one who said in the beginning that we had the problem and found a solution. You got one there right now, actually. First and foremost is that as a group, we had decided back at the beginning of Zoom, that the newcomers, the most important person, and that people, are can be technologically challenged. So until someone actually does something, we don’t throw them out. Now lately, like everybody else, things had calm down. We got hit. I think there was one night we just stopped reporting when we hit 41. In the first 10¬†min. We let them all in, but what we do is this is when we have an inkling that you know this Twitter cause we we get the message from the Zoom that there’s a Twitter challenge, or your your stuff’s been posted. We do let them all in but what we do, is we have the settings that you were all talking about hosting, co-hosts, only you can’t rename, and then we, what we do is we go in and we check off hide profile picture, and we uncheck start video. So that basically what’s happening is if they’re coming in, and the video. I mean, if your video’s on when I do this, it’s gonna stay on. And then I just manually do turn it off. You’re either going to sit there and get a good meeting in, or you’re going to leave on your own, and I don’t even have to worry about throwing you out and what I do is I just put a blanket message in the chat, saying, You know, for security reasons we have turned off the video enable.

We did this 3 days in a row, and they haven’t come back because we’re not engaging. The other thing, we make it a point to do 2 things we make it a point to do. One is, never, ever talk about them in front of them, because all we’re doing is validating what they’re doing. And if you don’t play the game they don’t wanna play basically. The second thing is for training. And I would also offer, I’m I’m happy to help train anybody, for training. What we do cause it brings people up to speed so much faster is we don’t do a separate training. On a meeting we have, I think, Jeff is on here with me. Jeff will cover the room, but we do have on phones, because we can’t talk to each other on the meeting. Why, the meetings going on so I’m walking you through. Here’s where, but in real time while it’s happening, why  I’m doing it, and people are picking it up just like that. We never ask them to turn their video on. Because guess what if there a bomber they’re gonna turn their video on anyways? So what’s the point in asking them to turn their video on? So that’s what we did and like, I said, just a couple of days. And they realized they can’t do a damn thing. They haven’t been back in like a week and a half. We haven’t had anything. So I just want to share that

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you Kathleen. John A.

[John A. (WPB, Florida)]
Hey everybody, John alcoholic, West Palm Beach, Florida. So I jumped on zoom the day after we shut down our the world, and we could not have our meeting in a in the parking lot at our place in West Palm Beach. Didn’t know the first thing about Zoom, but and I knew I was in gonna drink. I had 37 years at the time, but I knew people would need support. And so this month will be 3 years since we’ve been on Zoom, and from day one, I said, well, we didn’t start out on on into group until maybe 6 months in. From day one when we got got on intergroup and started getting some Zoom bombers I said we’re not gonna let them dictate how we run our meetings. We don’t let the zoom bombers dictate how we run our meetings, and we would rather be inclusive instead of exclusive. You know I used to go to some meetings, and everything was on locked down, you know the chat was at no one, you had to have your video on. You had this with that. No, the zoom bombers don’t dictate how we run our meetings. So what they found is that if they don’t have the attention they want, they leave. So we we we make sure at the beginning of the meeting with with the fellowship, the the unmute is on. But if we get zoom bombers the first thing we do is mute everyone. And then we go to security and stop videos. And they leave in 2 to 3¬†min. 5¬†min. And if there’s enough time before the meeting starts, during fellowship, we’ll turn the the videos back on, and we’ll turn on the the chat. I’m sorry we’ll turn the, you know. They can unmute themselves so that we can fellowship again.

We don’t let them dictate how we run our meetings, and as a black man, you know the way they like to throw out there I don’t give a crap about that bullshit. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but what the hell you know these are, what? What I call them is future members of AA. I call them future members of AA, and I swear to God one day somebody’s gonna walk into an in person meeting and say, I owe you guys an amends because I’ve bomb your online meeting or they’re gonna walk into an online meeting and say, I owe you guys an amends, you know, I used to bomb and we’ve had we had some people state where our meeting, we’ve had some people come in and say, you know, I show your information on Twitter. So yeah, we we don’t let them dictate how we run our meetings.

Also our trainers are good, you know, if you don’t have good trainers, you know, to let them know to look for, and what I started doing recently in the last 2 weeks. I’ve started recording a portion of the meeting. Especially if I get an email from Zoom. Saying that the meeting is at risk. I’ll start recording a portion  of the meeting so that I can show the people we’re training and and even our regular host and co-host, videos of like these idiots, you know we’ll put out there. You know. So, yeah, so I I figure the Zoom bombers is like the Coronavirus, the Coronavirus is here to stay forever, probably just like the flu and the Zoom bombers are gonna be here forever, but just like with the Coronavirus virus, we can take precautions with zoom bombers. No, they’ll probably never go away. I mean they were in here. I was wondering if we would get some in here.

They were here so, but we can get rid of them as soon as possible, and don’t let them dictate how we run our meetings, how we do our thing, and and don’t. Yes, exactly. We don’t talk about them at all. Well, we try not to talk about them, you know, and when someone, new to our meeting brings it up, I say, that’s what they’re looking for, the attention. Just remove them. Yeah, that’s it. That thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks, John. Let’s go to Brad

[Brad W. (Tampa FL)]
Hey! Also, I’m Brad. I’m alcoholic, and tampa not newcomer Zoom room is my group.  It’s not mine. But it’s my home group, and you know, back when the pandemic started. So there’s several different ways that I’ve tried, and I and I’ll help facilitate several different meetings. So there’s a bunch of different options is a request in a passcode. Instead of having the pass goes listed. But you got to have be able to email it within one to 3¬†min is what the requirement is for a group. And because we’re alcoholics, we want our answer right now. We don’t want to wait we’re gonna find an easier meeting to get into. So with using that option, we had 30 to 70 members. Regularly. So we put the password out there online and our numbers doubled, and fortunately you know this, and and I don’t like calling zoom bombers, because I pretended like I was a zoom bomber with the group of people to find out what’s the point why they’re doing what they’re doing. They like the name, being called Zoom Bombers, because they think they’re terrorists, and so we call them disruptive participants.

And we try not to engage in them as well, and it’s just for me, I mean, we gotta take the fire off of it. So once they find out, your meeting is secured they move on. However, their time zone is different than our time zone. So they’re gonna come throughout the entire meeting. So you gotta have people that are gonna be watching the entire meeting. So people have security, have to be watching the entire meeting, and since I find that I mean even in this meeting right now, potato chip Guy was in here like 4 times I seen. Cause. I’m watching the middle page, and that’s what I kind of do with other meetings. And that’s where they come in. So it’s just getting to hang up with what you gotta do to keep the meeting secure. We can’t freakin lock down the whole freaking fort, because then a real alcoholic who is not going to be able to find it, because they’re going to be forced out like locking the meeting, because it’s 15¬†min into the meeting, started. I do not agree with that option, because what happens if you get disconnected, you can’t even get in your own meeting because they locked the meeting. So you know, late people can’t come in.

We’re not locking the door just because you’re late. Maybe in a treatment center, they might. But it’s just that, you know, and I get it, the disruptive participants are have become a great problem. However, I look at it like this. I used to go to Chuck E Cheese a lot when I was a kid, and there’s a game called Whack-a-mole. I call it whack-a-troll. So it’s just that, you know. It gives you something to look at as a positive perspective. Of giving you something to do in service for your group. And to get people involved in it, and most of the groups that I help with have 30 to 60 people that are working in the background to help facilitate that meeting. Not every meeting, but like it was said, 5 to 7 co-hosts on every meeting, at every day. So I mean, and that just gives you enough people because you don’t want too many people doing security, at the same time, because my experience is one person could be accidentally removed by mistake. If you got 2 people doing security if you got 10 people doing security, you have 9 people that could be removed by mistake. Because if they’re not paying attention, they’re gonna accidentally remove somebody by mistake. I have done it. And I’m I’m good at what I do with security on meetings, and I have done it myself. So even, recently, so I’ll make sure I apologize to him as soon as I figure out that I just remove somebody by mistake, and I try to be a little more slower. But a little faster with it, because there is some other type of video that they’re using. That’s not foreign. That is very, very, very disruptive. And I’m not gonna go into what it is, that’s all I got.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks so much, Brad, for sharing. Tony D.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Wait, one said, please. Can I say a couple of things?

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Absolutely.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Thanks. I’m gonna probably expand the tips and tricks section in the in the guide a little more. But one little trick I like to use is, I go into my security shield, and I locked the meeting. If my waiting rooms getting getting flooded, I’ll lock the meeting for about 3 to 5¬†min, because that’s all it takes. They have no attention span. They’re on a raid. They’re raiding the waiting room or flooding it. If I lock the meeting, and they can’t get in. They instantly get bored. They go back to Twitter. They get the next code, and then they all go raid that code. So the store can be over very quickly just by doing that for a couple of minutes. You don’t have to worry.

And the second thing is, I’m getting bombarded with the same question. So I’m just gonna go ahead and answer it now. Why can’t the guide be downloaded? Well, there’s a very important reason. From the first time I wrote it I realized very quickly that if I allow downloads and printouts, then old versions are going to be spread around. Because  I noticed some areas, are and other GSOs have still have copies on their websites that are like a year and a half old. Well, they’re no longer any good. So when people go to those old versions and they try to use them and they don’t work, then they blame me, and they say the Guide doesn’t work, so I have it so that you have to go to the to the URL, the Google Doc, the Google Doc never changes. Just use it. We all have a computer in our hand. Have it up in your hand and your computer here, and just do it that way, please. That way. You always have the latest version. So I have to do tight version control so that I don’t have old versions roaming around. Otherwise the reputation of the Guide is going to tank. It’s the way I keep the quality level of the guide. High is by forcing everybody to the latest version, by limiting the distribution I can’t let you print it, guys, I can’t let old versions get around. It’s just a disaster for me. It makes it so hard when people start calling, screaming at me and emailing me, saying, my Guide doesn’t work when they’re using one that’s a year old. It’s just like I can’t I can’t. I’m just a volunteer doing this as a labor of love. They’re not paying me to take that kind of abuse.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Alright, hi! Tony!

[Toni D]
Hi! Tony, alcoholic. Hi, Tom, thank you. Everybody who put this together, and, Tom, I’m sure you’re tired of being told how I amazing you are, but I appreciate it, anyway. Yeah, I you know, I’m a co-host at a small meeting about 12 to 13, oOnce in a while 15 people. The host had a scheduling conflict through March. So he comes on and sets up the meeting and and makes me and another woman co-hosts. Both of us are technologically ignorant, and she’s even worse than I am, which is really going down there. But anyway, so we had one of those bouncing around, porno disruptors the other night, and nobody knew what to do, because there’s only like 12 of us. And there were 6 of them jumping around, and they took up almost the whole screen, you know, and nobody knew what to do. So the host isn’t there throughout the meeting. He comes at the end and closes it out.

Anyway, we just left. We all said, Leave the meeting and come back, you know, and that got rid of them. But my question is, in the past 15¬†min. I’ve seen 3 of those porno screens popping up, and 1 one guy had a name, you know, and our I looked at the participants to try and put see, and doesn’t show up, as a participant, even though his name was on the screen, and it happened so fast. We need a way when it happens that fast to do something, because, you know, this is a big meeting. You know, I had to scroll through all these names and couldn’t find his name.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 15:44:39
Because we had removed him by the time you got there Tony

[Toni Dragon] 15:44:39
Oh, good work, good work! But the thing is I just would like to know what to do in a hurry when it just hits you, you know, and,

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I’ll come to your group and train you guys, I’m available email, me

[Toni Dragon]
There’s only 2, 2 of us that are co-hosts.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
You need more volunteers. How big’s your meeting?

[Toni Dragon]
Well, I said, only like 12, about 12 people, sometimes 15. It’s a small meeting. It’s the first time it happened, you know, and it was like we were all in shock. To tell you the truth, it happened so fast.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, you’re lucky, you know. I mean, after all these meetings all this time you only happen to you one time

[Toni Dragon]
Well, it only had. Yeah, I know. But the thing is, it was just, you know, the fact that we just froze and didn’t know what to do. You know I don’t. Obviously these people are making the rounds. If they’re coming to this meeting, you know. So I’m just looking for a you know, a way to react quickly. As somebody who’s not very technologically educated.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
There are step-by-step instructions in the Security Guide

[Toni Dragon]
Okay, okay, it’s just the problem is is, I have no input into the controls.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I know I you can you? You could talk to me. You can email me. I will help you.

[Toni Dragon]
Okay. Thank you, Tom.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Of course.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Yeah. For example, Tony, when I’m trying to find somebody in the list of 300 people at the very top, there’s a screen. I can type in the first one or 2 or 3 letters of that name, and it quickly eliminates every name except for the r-o-bs right.

[Toni Dragon]
Okay. Okay. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Betty-Ann. You’re welcome.

——————————————–

[Betty-Ann] 15:46:29
Hi, Mark. Betty-Ann, alcoholic. Thank you guys for doing this. Thank you, Tom, for your all  you’re doing. I appreciate you very much. I’ve gotten that form email out, throwing once or twice, appreciate it. We learned a very small group, I mean, like 2 people and we’ve had to recruit other members to come and be security and bouncers, or whatever you want to call to remove people that are just being problems. And we do lock the meeting because we can just screen share as well. We’re literature based meeting. We like to share the literature. But what we found we’ve got the limit that. I’m just gonna is there any? I’ve got a couple? The one is. Is there any way to access the host key when the waiting room is enabled. I’m not finding any way. You have to be physically in the room right?

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
No. Correct.

[Betty-Ann] 15:47:26
Okay, alright and the only thing I’d like to unlock the be your groups, Bouncer. I need a bouncer, or I need a couple of people to come in and bounce like I said, there’s 2 of us. The one member we had fall during K’t do it anymore. So if there’s people willing to do that, if there’s a database somewhere that we can sign up to do that, or I’d be willing to do that and I’m looking for people to come, members that are because we do. Like once we get that, calm, down we have a great Meeting. I mean we had we. Still, we’ve signed up in in I don’t know. We’ve been on with you guys for over a year for now, and we got rid of the password because we we couldn’t handle the email traffic that was coming. We get 4 or 5 emails. We take rid of it to get rid of the password and and do the waiting room. And then we get 20 people coming and out of those 20, maybe 5 of them are bombers, or you know, and it’s with all the security settings and and we’re able to get rid of them. Get that under control in the first 5, 10¬†min, and and we have a decent meeting, and the other thing where I don’t care to turn your screen on or not. But we’d like you to participate with what we find is after we’ve done the readings people are leaving you want them. To share, and the room empties, like, you know, so I don’t know if they’re all new people. I don’t believe they’re bombers. I believe they are AA members. They just don’t want to share. So we have 4 people in the meeting room now. So you know. Good! I I don’t know. Those are what we’re struggling with right now is more keeping up, Protocol, safety protocols and and looking for extra people to come in and help. And we’re a noon meeting on Wednesday night. Wednesday afternoon. Yeah. Mountain time for the any lights group in the in the Directory.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Betty, and be sure to fill out the form. To ask for help. Melinda posted again for us.

[Betty-Ann]
I did.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks so much. Dave, Jp. Street.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hi! There! Dave!

[Dave J-P Street]
Everybody your name is Dave J. I’m an alcoholic. I want to say a couple of things before I get into this. Thank you so much for this meeting, when I got sober just before Covid hit. So after my first year, I go to my group, and there’s a sign saying we’re closed. And so Zoom became our home. It became our place of refuge. P street became my second home group, and I’ve been there ever since. I host a meeting on Tuesday nights, and the first meeting I hosted. I got bombed. You would think that if you really wanna feel bad, and you really want to feel the anxieties, and you really want to feel hurt. And you want to feel all the different things coming from that, because your responsibility to open up a meeting in the first meeting you go to, you get bombed, and you have to shut it down because you don’t have the tools to work with it, and you didn’t have the understanding of what the hell was going on. That is what I felt. So I went to my sponsor about it and he said, Oh, you just got hit. Oh, okay, that’s happened before. Do it again. And we came back.

So just as the other brother said, he said, our point there is to help other alcoholics. That’s step 12. That’s our point. The door is open for anybody to come in. That’s right. So we have to learn other techniques to work with it. But we did wind up doing is that we did start implementing having co-hosts with every meeting, every meeting and reason, for it is because if you have multiple co-hosts, it doesn’t disrupt the host of the chair from doing the job. How can you concentrate on the people there and then run through the room, trying to do security. It won’t work. So we started doing that initially, we start shutting the meeting down right after we say, Hey, come back in 5¬†min.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
That’s right. Right hmm

[Dave J-P Street]
And then after we start using the co-host, we open up a waiting room, too. Now I don’t like the way waiting room, for only one reason, one I can’t screen you 100%, but what I can do if I’m a co-host, and there’s another co-host. Do you know that person over there? Okay, keep an eye on that one. Keep an eye on that one, and then, as they start to do the disruptions, we can get them out quicker. We did have a meeting just before Thanksgiving. It was the worst ever seen. I think we had 5 and a 5 at one time. They bounced all over that screen.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, I think dude. I talk about waiting room in depth, in the Guide. Without it. You’re screwed because you have no way of stopping people from entering your room. So it may not be ideal, but having a turned off, is just, Wow, yeah.

[Dave J-P Street]
It’s worse, it’s way worse. And then also on something else. I’m say one thing that I’m gonna leave the other thing, too. Is the security and networks versus unsecured networks. That first meeting I went through. I was at work on my phone. I was on unsecured network, and it got hit quick, and then I found out at a couple of other meetings that they were in a shared network without a VPN. They were getting hit that way, too, so there may be multiple ways of coming in, but you just have to be aware of it, and then try to, you know, work on it day by day with what’s going on. This has been a great meeting, because the fact I needed a guide, and I think for the other members. I sent them this meeting, I say, hey! Come on in here and listen in, and I’m hoping that they got there. And then, later on, we have a group conscious. We can review this. So thanks a lot, Tom. Your work is immeasurable,  I’m as a lark, just hearing all this dedication you put into this program. Thank you so much. Thanks everybody for being here.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Dave. Joseph.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] 15:52:58
Grateful for your kind words.

[Joseph]
Hi, everyone! I’m Joseph. I’m an alcoholic. What a cool meeting! You know this is cool. I just wanted to throw a couple of things out there at people, and I’ve learned some new things from your spreadsheet man. So thanks for putting that together. I really did. One of the things I do. I just wanted to share this with people, because sometimes you want err on the side of helping someone. And there’s tons of people that you’re not sure of. You know that you’re just like you know, their camera spinning in a circle because they’re walking outside real fast, or you know, you just you don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t want to take them out. You want to err on the side of like helping someone if they really need help, you know. So the thing that I usually do is just after they unmute. I’m ready. I’m I’ve got the right click just hanging on the put in the waiting room button and I hover specifically over the put in the waiting room button, because it’s a one click thing and can remove it, and then if you made a mistake you can get them back. So I just wanted to share that with everybody and hopefully, that’s a helpful tip.

Thanks for letting me share.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
That is.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Joseph. Scott.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hello Scott

[Scott (LGBTQ+) Buffalo, NY]
Hi, Scott alcoholic from Buffalo, so I’m new to Aa, and I was nominated to be a co-host but I don’t have a computer. I have my phone. Am I able to reconfigure settings through my phone? Or does that meeting chair have to do it?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah. It’s well, you know, Zoom recently put out a phone update of the client that’s actually not bad. But it’s does not have all the features of the desktop version in my guide. I recommend. I mean, if I even if a chromebook is better than a phone, if you’re trying to host a meeting.

[Scott (LGBTQ+) Buffalo, NY]
I’m I’m co-host, so I’m I’m in charge of security. He had that pornographic video guy, and he changed his name every single second, and then bounces around.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, doing it? Impossible with the phone? Almost impossible, not not impossible. But very difficult, to do with the phone, because the interface you just can’t move around fast enough on it if you’re gonna do security. I highly recommend at least a laptop at minimum, even a chromebook which you get for under 100 bucks.

[Scott (LGBTQ+) Buffalo, NY]
So should I have someone else be security until I get up laptop or computer?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Honest answer, yes.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
So we wouldn’t let you do it on in our group with the phone.

[Scott (LGBTQ+) Buffalo, NY]
Okay. Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah. It’s no slight. I mean, phones are great. But when doing this stuff you got to move fast. That’s the key

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Yeah. Move. Fast.

[Scott (LGBTQ+) Buffalo, NY]
Well, I do have a computer, but it’s in service. So yeah, I’ll let them know when I get it back. Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Very cool.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks Scott! Bracha.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hi Bracha

[Bracha – Israel]
I’m grateful recovered, alcoholic. My name is Bracha. Thank you all for this service. It’s phenomenal. I have a couple of quick questions, Tom. Is it working? I mean, there are, first of all, I host and co-hosts. Then I have a room that my meeting my group. The meeting is out of my room, so I’m in a lot of meetings involved in service. Do you recommend putting in, and I’ve seen it in several meetings, you know where, while you’re waiting for the room to open, you know we’ve a request that you, you know, put your camera on, for you know, whatever for security reason do you recommend that? Or do you think that that serves any real purpose?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
In my guide I highly recommend a custom splash screen. It gives your meeting a nice vibe. You can put a logo up. You can give people a an overview, and it makes it a little less boring for them while they’re waiting for you to let them in. Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s healthy.

[Bracha – Israel]
Okay, just quickly. How does one disable the apps?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You could turn off the zoom app platform in the global settings. The Security Guide will help you with that.

[Bracha – Israel]
Okay, and that will get rid of an app that was accidentally turned on?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It. It’ll make it very difficult for for them to be turned on at all. Yeah, yeah.

[Bracha – Israel]
Okay. Okay. And I know this is probably off topic, and probably I already know the answer, but OIAA is for AA only meetings not fellowship meetings, not any any 12 step.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
No, I mean they should be the ones answering, but no.

[Bracha – Israel]
Okay, well, yeah, I no. We no cause some of our meetings are all fellowship meetings. So okay, alright.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I don’t. Yeah, I mean, Mark, is there any problem with that? No, I don’t think so. Right

[Jan BB OIAA PAC]
There is a problem. OIAA only list. Aa meetings, bona fide, AA meetings, and they’re and they’re vetted. All meetings are vetted. Yeah, sure.

[Bracha – Israel]
Okay. Okay. Great. Well, you’ll you’ll be hearing for me, because I don’t think any of the meetings that I’m involved in are listed. So thank you. Very much for your service, all of you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 15:58:21
I apologize. Thank you, Jan.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I stand corrected.  Corrected. Sorry I shouldn’t have spoke

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
No, thank you, Jan. I didn’t quite hear the question right either. Sorry, and she was absolutely correct.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Bye, yeah, bye. Reza! Hello!

[Reza (Vienna/Austria)]
Good night to be here. Thank you, Tom, for a time.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hello!

[Reza (Vienna/Austria)]
Reza alcoholic. Glad to be here. First of all, Excuse my poor English. It isn’t that good, but okay, I’m trying my best. Tom. You mentioned the trade off between meetings being easily accessible on the one side, and on the other side the whole security situation right?  I face the same as I tried to host a meeting, and but what I’m thinking about is that I guess AA as an organization probably will be for the Zoom Corporation some kind of key account. Right cause. I know, of course, Zoom Meetings are autonomous, but anyway, I’ve I think Zoom corporation will listen to AA organization. Probably I don’t know, but my question is, is there any collaboration? Or, let’s say, product development. Oh, some helping hands for me to zoom corporation to tell them which security features will fit our needs to get better. Yeah, to. Just yeah, to get a better client for this trade off, because on one side we need easily, easily accessible meetings on the other side, we have the zoom bombers and I’m pretty sure that there are some security features which would help us. It gets more security. Right? That’s my question.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Then, yeah. Then the thing to do would be to email me, because I’m one of the people that can communicate to the security team of Zoom directly these ideas for them to pass around with their programmers and see if they can be implemented. They may have good reasons to not to do it. I don’t know but there are some of us that can do that. You also, anyone can email them, and with their ideas, and they will that way.

[Reza (Vienna/Austria)]
Yeah, yeah. But of course, of course, my point is just is is that I think I guess I guess that’s the AA or organization, or some some representative.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I can’t. Yeah, I can’t break anonymity. But AA GSO is involved, and there are members from other GSOs around the world that are involved in this. And I’m involved because of my security guide and there are some of us that the yes, we do talk directly to zoom about what the needs of recovery meetings are. So you’re getting that already. But you gotta if if you have an idea, and you tell one of us, and I’m one of them. You know me now you’ve got my email. Tell me your ideas.

I can help you get it to them without like you said to have more direct voice. Yeah, sure, if it’s a good idea, I I’ll go to bat for you, sure. No problem.

[Reza (Vienna/Austria)]
Another question. You mentioned that the pass codes doesn’t add up to safety, so I guess Zoom Corporation uses some outdated encryption algorithms right?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
No, they don’t encrypt at all, they use something called a hash, which is from the Linux days, and it actually has no protection at all. It’s very easily hacked, and they do it just as a feel good thing, they don’t work.

[Reza (Vienna/Austria)]
Yeah, yeah, I know I I got it. Got it. They don’t work, but endless

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
If I can, answer your question, there is end to end encryption now, where there are actual security keys, and the whole thing’s encrypted. But it’s very resource, intensive. So it doesn’t work for recovery meetings. Because most of us are newcomers with like government phones and stuff that don’t have the juice to do end to end encryption. And they just don’t have the power to do it. So in the Guide I do not recommend end-to-end encryption being turned on for that reason. It’s too resource intensive at this time.

[Reza (Vienna/Austria)]
Okay. Okay. Oh, that’s nice. Thank you very much, Tom. Thank you both a lot.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks, Reza. Let’s go to Jeff.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You’re welcome, sir.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hi, Jeff!

[Jeff – Eastern CT Sober Friends]
Hey? Jeff. Person in recovery. Thank you very much. When I saw the security guide, I tell you, I got pretty excited and when you said it was in 3 layers I was like, well, this is the guy, so good for you. So real, quick. We have a pro account. We probably have 10 co-hosts. We all sign in through the same account to get co-host most of the time. Some people are given co-hosts when they come in, and even though we’ve done everything that Zoom support said to get rid of, coordinate with Zoom Apps, it comes up and is sometimes visible by some people, sometimes checked sometimes there. Is that a concern because I’ve been back and forth with them for 3 weeks, and they said, if you want it, taken care of, talk to customer support. And I said, well, isn’t it a security issue, or is it not?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It is a huge security issue. And that is because the platforms new so depending on the version of Zoom client, you’re running, people running older versions aren’t going to see it. And then, all of a sudden, you update to the latest zoom version, and there they are. But if it’s turned off in the global settings of the host meeting that’s running, you won’t really be able to do anything with them, anyway. The the button might be in the tray. But you’re not going to get very far, so don’t worry.

[Jeff – Eastern CT Sober Friends]
Okay. So nobody coming in can do anything. Okay, cool.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, it’s just ugly interface issue that they haven’t cleaned up yet, because it’s such a new feature

[Jeff – Eastern CT Sober Friends]
Somebody had mentioned being on a phone to talk with just co-host is Channels is going to do anything for us, since we only have one account, or is that?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I’m sorry I don’t understand the question.

[Jeff – Eastern CT Sober Friends]
What we want to do is talk between co-hosts for security, and to say what’s going on? Or should we just use regular phone? Do you know what I’m saying?

[Jennifer A]
Jeff. Some groups have Whatsapp threads just for people in service for that purpose.

[Jeff – Eastern CT Sober Friends]
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah like in Kiev. We have a Whatsapp channel that the that the you know, the home group members meaning the people running the meeting. We do our business stuff there. So we don’t bore everybody. That’s one way. And there’s yeah, anything that works.

[Jeff – Eastern CT Sober Friends]
Okay. One other quick question, thinking about making a hot key for removing people. But you’re saying, stop video works just as well with something like auto hot key work to make a hot key. Once you right click on somebody to do it quickly rather than 3 more clicks and find remove. Or is that just kind of a waste of time?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I can’t really answer that, because you’d have to use a third party app at this point. Zoom doesn’t even have that functionality that I know of. It’s the best thing to do is like I said, stop the video. And I also do mention in the Security Guide, like one way to do it. There are others we can talk about it, one on one. If you want to find a unique way, all meetings are different, and they have different behaviors, and you have a different set of, some people. Some meetings are lucky enough to have, like 10 people who, like are programmers for Microsoft, you know, and like. So they’re like dialed in to the point where you could run the meeting while while you’re all sleeping alright, and be fine. And then there’s other meetings where we’re just trying to do an AA meeting online man and a little bit of extra TLC, that’s where I come in, you know, it’s like, just email me. Let’s talk, and we’ll vibe it out. We’ll figure out how best to be of service. Okay, you’re welcome.

[Jeff – Eastern CT Sober Friends]
Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Jeff. Leslie. Nice to see you.

[Lesliee A SoCal]
Good to see you. You’re doing good work. I am the IGR, for a women’s meeting. And so for many women in AA. Even 10¬†s of some of those videos is way too much, but we also want to be open for trans women. So sometimes we’ll let a man’s name in with a woman’s image as their icon that hasn’t been working out too well for us. So can you just repeat quickly for me the fastest way to stop a video?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You go, you click on their window, and the 3 dots right there. And you say, stop video. That’s. And if you need to call the whole meeting cause they’re one of those people floating around, then you go to your security shield, and you say, suspend participant activities. That is red for a reason. In the security shield is because it will literally turn off everybody’s video. It completely frees the meeting until you uncheck that that’s only if it’s out of control. Okay. But the first thing you want to do like is use one of the 2 tricks if they’re not bouncing around the screen, just go to their square and stop their video. They won’t be able to start it again without your permission, because you have to ask them to restart. That’s how they’d be able to do it if they’re the one bouncing around the screen. They’re using that trick. Go to participants, find a participant type in the first few characters that will lock their name in the participant window, even though they’re bouncing around your gallery, and then you can stop their video that way.

[Lesliee A SoCal]
Okay, thank you. And I just wanted to share a couple of things that I’ve noticed that I haven’t heard yet, and that is as per your description of our disruptors. They they tend to increase during school holidays.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] 16:09:40
They sure do!

[Lesliee A SoCal]
They usually show up after the meeting has begun. But between like 10 and 15¬†min, you know, you’re done with your readings, but you’re still trying to let people in, and and that’s when I usually get hit, and many times I am both host and bouncer. So yeah, I’ve had a lot of boo boos.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
And I can explain why it’s because the scout comes in, and they see that the meetings vulnerable and it takes them a minute to go back, report to everybody to gather up and then flood your meeting. So there’s a delay there a little lag.

[Lesliee A SoCal]
Alright. Well, I have put in a request for your personal help, and I am gonna study your your guide. Thank you so much.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You will get it, and it will be my honor

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks Leslie. Herold.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hi! Harold!

[Harold C.]
…For a local website, Western Canada, amateur website builder for 20 years. Call Zoom Meetings about 2 years ago they were doing surveys at that time found about 80% newcomers with less than 6 months sobriety. About 10% old times with more than 5 years. Took that as a call to action, saddle up, lock and load. Let’s get those newcomers the information they need to sober up and stay sober.  Been dedicated to Zoom ever since. Been doing about 6¬†hours a day of meetings 7 days a week, intend to continue. The question I have is about email verification. Is it useful? Should we keep doing it? Do we need to require an email notification before giving the password?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Because the passwords don’t work anyway. They’re they’re not scanning your meetings. They’re not scanning even the OIAA guide, even though it seems like they are. They are looking for vulnerable meetings that aren’t configured. Properly on the zoom, servers themselves. They have software that can rapidly scan all of the ports they’re called ports that the Zoom servers are using to look for vulnerable meetings, and they can find them that way they’re using pretty sophisticated tools nowadays to find these, these scouts. They’re not sitting there reading our meeting directories. They could care less about those.

[Harold C.]
Really, alright. That’s new information. A lot of new stuff today. And find out. Could you do one of these type of meetings once every couple of months for security people with updates?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Sure zoom is often zoom.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Well, I know. Sign up for the support team. Let us know you want training.

[Harold C.]
If you could do this.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Let us know you’d like to help join that team.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
We’re probably going to start running these monthly, it seems, and Harold, meeting verifications, meeting verifications are a great add to your meeting.

[Harold C.]
Cool monthly meeting should be great

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
There’s many ways to do it, and it does bring in a lot of newcomers, maybe because they have to.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Proof of attendance.

[Harold C.]
Meeting, verification, definition, please.

[Jan BB OIAA PAC]
Yes. Can I? Can I? Can I add something? Yeah, can I add something to that?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, yeah, I was. I’m sorry.

[Jan BB OIAA PAC]
OIAA doesn’t endorse that, nor does it oppose it. We have no guidelines on meeting verification that comes under tradition 4, and that’s for each group to make that decision.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
And I was under the understanding that you were using verification in order to obtain a meeting password. Not that for proof of attendance. Yeah. I wasn’t. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about a system where you make people email  you, and and then you give them the password.

[Harold C.]
Right. That doesn’t work. Because, okay, the meeting that I’m thinking now a slide comes up. You’re not authorized gender. This meeting because you need to log in under a commercial account. That’s all. One of our Admin people figured out that. So you have to put in your email and password to get into the meeting, to be able to enter your password code. Have you heard of that, is it useful?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, that’s, it’s just the wrong setting. They said, the wrong setting in the global settings, the if you go through the Security Guide that will fix that

[Harold C.]
Okay. Good. Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
There’s corporate account settings, too, that we don’t wanna touch, and the Zoom Security guide skips over that. So so yeah, that’s what they did.

[Harold C.] 16:14:22
Right pleasant to meet you. Glad you’re able to have me carry on sir, you’re doing a great thing.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] 16:14:29
No problem.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you. Harold. Let’s go to Ed.

[Ed B. Munich] 16:14:41
Hi Ed alcoholic calling in from Munich. Many thanks. Been a very informative meeting, and something, Tom you said about the the the disruptors are gaining access via port scanning the Zoom servers it just didn’t seem to and see the fit Yeah. It just didn’t seem to fit with the group’s experience when they de-listed they weren’t getting disrupted as much, so I wondered if they they could be just simply scraping the website listings. And you know, just attempting to gain access to them automatically looking for a vulnerable one.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah.

[Ed B. Munich] 16:15:28
And if that’s so, if that was the case, sorry is just a second part to this. If that was the case, that we could make it slightly more difficult by maybe putting an image of the meeting address, not so difficult for somebody to read, they need to go to an individual meeting, so they need to and transcribe a 10 digit code, but it makes it more difficult for that makes it more difficult for these to be scraped in bulk like or something along the lines of maybe like a captcha. Where? Okay, you want to go to a meeting in Florida. Okay, solve this captcha, and you can have the the meeting ID, or you can go directly to the meeting. So just put that right there. Yeah. So I don’t understand why Zoom would be responding to port scans from anything other than a Zoom client, you know. So. But yeah, leave it there. Thanks for all your service and your great work.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah. Well, sure, there is some scraping going on, but but what I meant was the vast majority are doing it that way. But you’re right. And and yeah, if it was an image it would be much more difficult to deal with, and that is a good idea. And maybe OIAA wants to think about that. That’s not a bad idea.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Not a bad idea. We’re gonna think about that. Teresa.

[TheresaB (TX)]
Everyone I’m Theresa and I’m an alcoholic, and thanks everyone who put this meeting together, and thanks Tom, for all your hard work. I was in a meeting recently, and some somebody was monitoring and hit remove to somebody they shouldn’t have. Is there any way that we can notify  Zoom that that emails okay, to come back on forever.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, when you do that, if you say report, just zoom, you’ll get an email that said, No, you don’t

[TheresaB (TX)]
No. They they removed the person they use the feature, remove that to the understanding means that that person can never come back.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
No, they can come back the next time the meetings.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
24 hours Yeah.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah. The next time you reboot the or they can change their IP and come back. Actually, if you want to know the truth.

[TheresaB (TX)]
Okay. I don’t know how to change an IP, and I know this lady doesn’t know how to do it either. But thank you very much

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 16:18:07
Teresa, we do. We encounter that often, and we quickly, if we can contact the person we apologize, we say it’s just. It was an accident, and it happens in trying to remove bombers, and they can come back in 24¬†hours. They’ll be clear.

[TheresaB (TX)]
Okay. Thank you very much.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Most people are pretty understanding, Dick, D

[Dick D — Athens, GA]
Hey, there! My name is Dick D, and I’m recovering. I’ll call here in Athens, Georgia, when the there are meeting shutdown on March 12th, and someone in that last meeting said we gotta figure out a way to have meetings, you know wife, for no wife job or no job virus or no virus. And so we started the virus or no virus meeting that night, and and and I used my personal zoom account quickly, you know, 2 days later we’ve realized we needed the pro account and and we’ve been on the same meeting. Id ever since so it’s coming up on 3 years.

One of our members, in response to our security problems, with the, with the bombers thought that we need to scrap our old number because the the bombers have our have our number. So I’m hearing that probably is nothing to do with it. That cause they they were. They were suggesting that we scrap our number, start a whole new meeting schedule with a new meeting number. And and there was a lot of concerns there, because a lot of our regulars have the number in there, you know. They’re ready to go. So am I right that it really wouldn’t make any difference to to get a new meeting number

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Temporary fix, but they’re gonna find it pretty quickly again, anyway. So all if it inconveniences everybody, and then   if you don’t have your security settings correct to guard up against this stuff, and you don’t have the proper people trained. The training, which isn’t hard to do, to to just mitigate this stuff that you’re just gonna get into it over and over again. Just gonna keep on happening.

[Dick D — Athens, GA]
Right. And I think I think inconveniences our regulars a lot more. We need to meet the bombers was my point. And and so, anyway, this has been a great meeting of hearing your experience and getting strength. And you’ve actually given me some hope that we could maybe clean up our our meeting and at the last group conscience we had we had several people  who wanted to us to pull out of the OIAA, and then the notice for this meeting came up so I’m very optimistic that we can finish going through the guide. Get our meeting cleaned up and and done, I will notice.  I’d like to make one more point that our our bombing really started after we listed with OIAA. We were a local meeting, only pretty much. We responded to the closing of local meetings. We had maybe 50 to 75 people at a at a meeting. All local folks, and  maybe their friends from around around the country, never had a bomber. And then when we, when we joined OIAA, is when it started, and and we sort of develop some techniques and then did some security stuff. And we were sort of on an okay basis. But it’s within the last 2 months that it’s gotten so bad. But yeah, thanks for the Guide. Thanks for all that hard work I have signed up to be on security team and and look forward to work closely with you all. Thanks.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks Dick D. I’m gonna make a call. We’re gonna go another 30¬†min. We’ve got about 15 hands or so up, and we’ll try and stop about 10¬†min before the top of the hour, and we’ll go to Annie.

[Annie C HG]
Hi family, Annie C Bakersfield, California. My home group is Alcoholics  101 Broken Elevator tTake the Steps. We tend to average about 90 to 120 people per meeting 3 times a day. So we expect bombers, they’re mostly just an exercise in patience for tolerance and love during school breaks. It can get a little hectic. We had one day where it was over 50¬† that just between 3 of us reporting. And one thing we did notice, I wanted to throw it out there for women’s meetings, but we do it for our men’s meetings, as well, is we use breakout rooms. That way you have the waiting room, and you have the main room. You can have anyone, man or woman running security in the main room before they admit to the actual meeting and a breakout room. It works really well for us. But the bigger question, I apologize if my signal is not great. The bigger question have, if it can be answered. We’ve seen an uptick in kids. We remove them from the meeting. They’re immediately re-entering. We’re reporting, we’re confirming the reports with Zoom. But we’re seeing the same faces sometimes 3, 4, 5 times in a single meeting, and I cannot get through to anyone at Zoom about what actions they are taking to prevent this repeated entry, we have our security settings so that people can’t re-enter for 24¬†hours if they’ve been removed, etc. I, just how we’ve had members lose their accounts and couldn’t even use the same computer to log into zoom, even if they were swapping VPNs, or whatever. So I what the heck is happening? Why are they banning our people? But they’re letting the 14 year old because of screaming and playing for coming 5 times, and I don’t understand this.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, I don’t either.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It’s, yeah.

[Annie C HG]
Okay. So keep pursuing Zoom. Okay, thanks to you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we’re all this is all unprecedented. This is all new to the entire planet, you know, we’re all growing up. Society hasn’t yet learned how to use technology and play nice yet. I don’t know if you can tell on almost every website you’ve been on, ever, we don’t know how to get along very well yet using technology. And we’re learning. And it’s a process and it’s a painful one, obviously. But you know what personally, from where I sit. I think we’re doing pretty damn good because lives are being saved. So if we got a few issues along the way, I think we’re doing way more good than harm with this. I personally do.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you Annie. Tall Denise.

[TALL DENISE.R GA VIA QNS NY]
Hi! Everybody! My name is Denise, and I am truly grateful alcoholic. Tom! And Mark, thank you, and everyone else who is doing service on this meeting. Thank you so very much. My question probably has been asked and answered but with my aging hearing, I’m gonna have to ask it again. So we have a Zoom Meeting here, and when we first got the account we had it set up where you know the person had signed up for the account. They was the host, and each Tuesday they will be there to open up the meeting and then make the other members co-host. So we had the waiting room, letting people in. Yada Yada. So what happened is we had to change that system because the person that had the account could no longer have the account. So we put it in someone else’s name, credit card. The account and everything. So the person who has the account now cannot be there to open up the meeting. So the parameters was changed, whereas there’s no waiting room, the members will come in and use the key code to make themselves host and then appoint the co-host. So my question to you is that, suppose the bombers start coming in. How do we get rid of them and keep them out? If we no longer have that waiting room set up?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You don’t. This is why I say over and over in the Security Guide, don’t turn waiting room off to save your own life. Don’t do it. It’s your only tool to keep them out when you’re being flooded.

[TALL DENISE.R GA VIA QNS NY]
So being that we’re set up like this. Can I go into the security box and put the waiting room on?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You’d be able to turn it on. Yeah, unless they lock the setting and global settings. Use that little padlock to force it to stay off, which I hope they didn’t do. You should be able to turn it on.

[TALL DENISE.R GA VIA QNS NY]
Okay, in the Security Icon?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
And the little dirty field. Yeah, the shield icon hopefully get back on. Yeah.

[TALL DENISE.R GA VIA QNS NY]
Okay, okay, so do you recommend, so each time, when we start the meeting on Tuesday, the person that goes into the the host or the co-host, we should set that up automatically, just click that on so that okay, so we’ll click on the waiting room, once we come in

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yes.  Yeah, you do. You want waiting rooms? Your best friend when it comes to zoom security? Truly.

[TALL DENISE.R GA VIA QNS NY]
Okay, thank you so very much. And again, thank you all for doing service.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Denise. Andrew P.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hi Andrew

[Andrew P]
Thank you for this meeting so much more sorry. My video seems to be…

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
No, we got a great opportunity here. Everyone we’re gonna learn how to find this problem. Andrew, you’re ready. You’re on a you’re on a PC right now, or a Mac

[Andrew P]
I’m on a  laptop.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, okay, good. And your tray on the bottom there, where your controls are. You see your start? Stop, video, icon, click the little arrow right to the right of it.

[Andrew P]
Yes. Okay. And oh, yes. Yeah, right.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
The menu pops up. Click, video settings.

[Andrew P]
Yeah. Oh, ok.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Now, and that went on the bottom. There, see, advanced

[Andrew P]
Yes, okay, really.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Click, that and then there’s an option; optimize video quality with de-noise. Uncheck that box

[Andrew P]
Yeah. Unchecked that box. Okay.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
And leave it. Now get out of there by clicking your X. And now turn your video on, and we’re gonna see how how good looking you are, sir.

[Andrew P]]
Oh, that’s scary! Oh, alright! Well, thank you very much.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Been been waiting for that one, excellent.

[Andrew P]]
Alright, I am so not tech savvy? Oh, I’m from oh, from western Sydney, in Australia. I’m a member of 2 meetings which are hybrid meetings, and I think on one of those we’re one of those meetings that doesn’t Have all these safety things set up. Oh, for one would love to have you, Tom, teach our group, well groups, 2 groups, how we how to work these things. Our host, the a member who has the the setup. He’s   the host. He he joins the meetings every Friday and Saturday night for us. And elects co-hosts and stuff like that. I, usually if I’m at the meeting, I’m usually work from my phone, so I don’t. I heard you say earlier that the phones yeah does doesn’t have all these setups. Another issue we sometimes have is with the Internet connections. Because we work from a room, from a church, a church hall, which we sometimes is their Internet. And it’s bit dodgy. But yeah, look I said, I’m not Internet savvy I’m just learning.  I think our host was on earlier but he had to go and there’s some others that that that generally do all these sort of stuff, but I’m learning, I’ve said if it wasn’t for AA and it wasn’t for Zoom I did not know how to turn a computer on 2 years ago. So I’m learning, you know, I’m teachable today. And that’s thanks to this fellowship and I’m grateful for this fellowship. Grateful for all your service. Everyone today. Thank you very much, and thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You’re welcome.

[Andrew P]
With this meeting they’d be good, I think. I signed up for the the support sign up. I think I hope I have.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 16:32:11
Good.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] 16:32:16
AA is a team sport. We’re all in this together.

[Andrew P]
Thank you. I’m so grateful for that.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 16:32:23
Okay, we’re gonna try this one. Terry, G,

[Terri G .]
Oh, honey, thanks for the meeting, like everybody saying, I just have 2 quick questions, Tom. I’ve tried to contact you several times. You’re difficult to contact, and so I hope that I can try again and and get through to you. Yeah. So one thing I want to just ask is, why, why is it? Yeah, why is it that we can’t turn off the disrupters using the background videos? That’s the part I don’t understand, because I think that’s the way they do their videos.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I do recommend you, turn it off.

[Terri G .] 16:33:08
So so we can turn that off for everybody. So every everybody doesn’t use their videos?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I can turn off you. You could turn off in your global settings in your zoom account to not allow them to use background virtual background videos, it’s a setting.

[Terri G .]
Yeah. Okay. And so that would mean once, that’s once that’s off, then they can’t show all those Porno videos or anything at all.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
And the Zoom Security guide, walk you right through that Well, at least using that that method. There are other ways to hijack a video feed that is beyond the scope of your question would take me a few minutes to explain. But I am looking through my emails for your name. Terri G! I do not see an email from you anywhere in my emails.

[Terri G .]
Yeah, it was. It was a few months ago. Now I heard you on the there’s I heard your story on it, and was fantastic on the the 7’clock speakers meeting. The great facts, and I tried to contact you back and forth, then, and I can I’ve got a couple of emails reply saying that you were busy, and I just could not get onto you. But anyway, look at that’s beside the point. The point is, I think, that you know, trying to be soft on these people is a problem, because what they’re doing is totally illegal for starters. And the other things that really makes me cranky is sometimes, if this is not children, sometimes we’re in our meeting. We get up to 200 people a day, and the the thing is we’re bombed all the time and our security team, just over and over and over, subjected to things that you just don’t want to look at every day.

And the point is that some of them have included child pornography. You know, beheadings. You’re talking about people having to look at at car accident victims falling out of cars. And all this sort of crap that they do. And you know the whole thing just makes me really angry. You guys have had today just today, that Chip guy coming into this meeting he’s renowned around our fellowship he’s in and out of our meeting on a regular basis, and other than reported to Zoom, which we constantly do absolutely nothing is done. And so, you know. I’ve got to the point where I’m frustrated, and I’m angry about all this now, because, you know, we’re a beginners meeting. We’re doing a great job and you know, this is just a total thorn in the side for AA as far as I’m concerned, and we’re a big fellowship. A lot of this have have you know, paid accounts with Zoom, and I think Zoom’s got to step up to the plate here and help us. That’s that’s my personal opinion, Tom. So thank you for what you’re doing.I really appreciate it, no doubt about it. I really appreciate it.

So God bless you all! That’s those are my thoughts today. Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Thank you. The problem, though, is, we can’t affiliate with a private company, to that degree. But but but but this, this is getting better. It is evolving, I mean, it’s not like it was in March of 2020, is it? I mean, we are getting better. We do have some problems yes, there are some jerks in the world, and yes, there is this thing called the Internet we all have to deal with full of some pretty sick people. And AA people, you know, don’t come here because they’re well to start with. So there is gonna be a mixture. But I submit that there are physical meetings that have disruptive members too. So it’s just a different brand. And we have to deal with it as a team. And as we all learn how to deal with this technology better, we’re gonna get better as a fellowship in dealing with it, and all of it’s going to evolve in time. We just have to stick to it and evolve with it, just like in the early days of AA. They had their, what they call the flying blind period, where things were chaotic, and it ended up with the 12 Traditions, and later the Concepts, I mean, they had to go through their growing pains too. Well, that’s we’re just in that phase as well. We’re in a Renaissance, and we just have to stick together and we’ll get through this. I know we will. I know we will.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Lottie, we’re gonna try and go another 15¬†min or so folks. So if you can be brief in your questions that might help everybody get a chance.

[Lottie H]
It will be brief. Hi group my name’s Lottie. From Washington, DC. So Serenity House is my home group, and I think that my question might have been answered. But like I heard someone say, aging process is slowing down my ears. But anyway, my quick question is, I cannot get onto my PC. And I have gotten a Chromebook, and I need to sign in as the host, and I’m having issues with that. I was supposed to have a couple of members to come by the help me with that. But I cannot get into the meeting using the my home groups login information. So I guess my question is, is it the Chromebook? Or is it something that I need to do in order to log in?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
The Chromebook should work fine. I mean, you just use the the play store just like you would on an android phone and you download Zoom, which you obviously have done. And you just log into it. And it should be okay, or you can get in through a website if you have the password, you can go to zoom.us in the chrome browser and log in there, and then you should be able to see that group’s meetings, and you should be able to launch a meeting that way.

[Lottie H]
Well, oh, because I’m supposed to open the meeting, so I’m the one that hosts that comes in early, and I use my. Their sign in information.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Then you’re better off going in through the Chrome browser on a Chromebook. It’s browser. Login to that account. And then Chrome will save a cookie, and it’ll keep you logged in for a while, and then you can just go to their meetings, and you should see their meetings, and then you should be able to start any of meetings you want to start. Right from within your web, browser, and then it will launch your zoom app just like it would on a PC. Or a Mac, or even your phone. Shouldn’t be a problem  for you. Shouldn’t be. Try going in through the website. You’ll probably have better luck.

[Lottie H]
Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Alright. T hank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks Lottie. Online 7 @ 7,

[Online 7@7]
Hello! My name is Kim I am an alcoholic. The question I have is, is it the right thing to do to ask somebody to identify themselves when they have a phone, or if their video is hidden, we have a tight, intimate group. And you know, sometimes we get 40 or 50, and I understand, on an open meeting.  I get it. You know people can, you know they’re not sure they can decide. What, and how do you handle something like this? Because I feel we should ask them to identify. I’m in New York, but I’ve lived in Florida and I’ve seen where they ask every person going around the room. Are you an alcoholic and if they’re not an alcoholic, they’re told to leave. Or they’re asked, do you have a desire? And they’re like, no, I’m here with a group, you know, a Safe Home group. And you know what the Safe Group Home Leader had to leave with them, you know, to to make sure they get watched. So my question is on a standpoint of anonymous. How do we handle it? And is it okay?

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 16:41:21
Where’s Jan? That’s a good one for Jan. I don’t think we really have an answer for that, because one, each group is autonomous. 2. We’re not. We’re not anonymous to ourselves. The question on how you handle that in an open versus closed meeting could be open to some interpretation perhaps.

[Jan BB OIAA PAC] 16:41:39
Yes, what we do sometimes, is that we ask groups to put that in their meeting description. So they would say, we only want people who are alcoholics, or have a desire to stop drinking, and some of them say we don’t want any anybody coming in and observing. Because a lot of nursing programs and other things do do that. And some say, yes, we do allow programs. You can come and observe, so that that’s really well handled if you’re listed on the Online Intergroup Meeting Directory in the meeting description. But that is definitely falls under Tradition 4. So it’s up to your group’s group conscience.

[Online 7@7]
Okay, thank you so much.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks, Kim. Let’s go to Carlos.

[Carlos D ]
Thank you for your service I’m Carlos, and I have an allergy to alcohol. I have 2 items that I need to cover. First of all, I want to know why is it that Zoom doesn’t list the names in alphabetical order in the participants block.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
They do except the raised hand people are another list, and then the host and co-hosts are yet another list. So they’re kind of stacked lists. But each one of those sublists are alphabetical.

[Carlos D ]
Okay. And secondly, for those people who are removed by mistake, they can always call in on their phone.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Correct.

[Carlos D ]
Okay, thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Or grab a different device that has a different IP address and they can get right back in. But you didn’t hear that from me.

[Carlos D ]
Right.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you. Carlos. Jen B.

[Jen B, Santa Fe NM]
Everybody, Jennifer, alcoholic. I could be wrong on this I don’t think I am. I  want to know if hackers can do the following, we mute everybody. Nobody can unmute themselves but I’ve seen a couple of times where people come in, and we can hear them. Is that a hack, or did the person not set the setting correctly at the beginning of the meeting.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
The second.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah.

[Jen B, Santa Fe NM]
So it’s impossible. That someone can hack in, and we can hear them after we mute everybody.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
There’s another setting that maybe sometimes gets missed, or maybe somebody checks it, but it in the participant setting. Muted on entry, or that can be turned off so they might be able to be. They might be joining the meeting unmuted. So you need to look at that setting to make sure it’s checked, and when you hit the mute all, there’s a button there that says, allow participants to unmute, you have to make sure that’s turned off when you mute all.

[Jen B, Santa Fe NM]
Yeah, I mean, I would. I wasn’t the post at the meeting, and I wasn’t in charge of meeting everyone at the beginning of the meeting, because we we have it. Our meeting. You can come in and talk, and then, when we start the meeting at the top of the hour, we mute everyone.

[Jennifer A]
Muting, all muting, all without change. But if the security setting participants can unmute is not unchecked, muting all people can still unmute themselves. You have to go into the security settings and uncheck participants can unmute after you mute all or before whichever one

[Jen B, Santa Fe NM]
Okay. Okay.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Tom. I wonder what you think, I’ve seen many times in our meetings where we control the mute and unmute. Everybody’s muted. It’s all set properly. But somebody, we can’t mute them. For some reason I don’t know what what causes that, but we can’t mute them, and then we have to ask them to mute themselves.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Bug. It’s a bug in the way to fix it, put them in the waiting room. Real quick. Bring them right back in and it resets, and then it’ll work just fine. Just explain to them, no offense. We’re not kicking you out. Just put them in the waiting room let them come right back. It is a known zoom, bug. They haven’t been able to fix because it’s a real sneaky bug.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Also, there is one way, I’m not gonna explain it, because it maybe. But there is a way to go around this unmute thing and lurk for a while, and then unmute in the middle of a meeting but I don’t want to explain it to the whole group. If anyone’s interested we can talk one on one about it. If you’re curious. But yeah, there’s it’s the Internet man. People find ways around things sometimes. But but yeah, that’s a bug

[Jen B, Santa Fe NM]
Okay. Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It’s a rare bug, but it’s a bug

[Jen B, Santa Fe NM]
Okay. Great. Thanks.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you. Sarah S

[Sarah S]
Hi! Everybody! My name’s Sarah, and I’m an alcoholic. I just wanted to share an experience, and then I did have a follow up question. I am Zoom admin for a meeting we have on average, about 150 to 200 people at a time, and our meeting runs for like 7¬†hours a night and we’ve always had bombers, and but lately is just been it’s actually it’s been demoralizing how how many have gotten through, and and how disruptive it’s been to the meeting. And so what we have done is we’ve done 2 things, and it’s made the biggest difference. The first thing we did was enable user authentication, and I know that they the name sounds kind of scary cause. It almost sounds like you have to prove who you are. But it’s not anything like that. It totally has changed the tone of our meeting, and then I haven’t heard anybody mention using the chat etiquette tool. We have an open chat. It’s it’s very controversial, but our chat is not directly, not people can’t speak directly to each other, but they can chat everyone like during the meeting, and we get bombers, and we get a lot of racial slurs and that, like, yeah. So the fact that now we have a we have words, you know they can’t say that now. So it’s like, I feel like my job here is done. If my legacy is that we never have to see that one word ever again, I will, you know it’s it’s been really incredible. I just wanted to share that because don’t hear. I don’t know of a lot of people who are using that chat etiquette tool yet so.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Correct. Security Guide: enable only authenticated meeting participants and Webinar attendees can join meetings and webinars. I highly recommend it.

[Sarah S]
Yeah. And I remember an older version. It seems like the last version I’d seen. Maybe it said, turn off because I keep up with your your version.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, because at one point, I it was, yeah. It had a different reason it for but like I said, the zoom security landscape changes frequently, long story doesn’t matter, it had to do with a bug that has been fixed. Now that it works great, turn it on.

[Sarah S]
Yeah. So I just wanted to, yeah, I wanted to share that. How much of a difference that’s made, and I wanted to ask, Is there a place for people like me like I love to brainstorm, about this. And is there like a group of people who are Zoom Admins are interested in security like a Whatsapp group or slack group, or anything? Because I would love to know about it.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
The great suggestion I’ll bring that to the Tech Committee. There is a sign-up form related to creating a group for that committee. One to just post it in the chat. Again, also, in the next version of the website, which will happen in early March, there will be a forum section of our OIAA website for people to create discussion rooms.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Nice

[Sarah S]
Awesome. Alright. Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you. Janice.

[Janice]
Hi! My name is Janice. I’m from the Corona group. The question I have is about 4 weeks ago we had gotten bombed, and when it came back they were able to take over the co-host duty. Do you know how that happened? And when they took it over the co-host duty, they were able to remove people which meant that people couldn’t get back in? And then, you know then locked the meeting. You know it was locked, so I was just curious as to how that was able to happen. Thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
There’s a few ways that can happen. The usual way that it happens that I’ve seen. It’s something because we’re human beings. Somebody by accident in a panic trying to get ’em out, you know, accidentally made him a co-host.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
It’s very probable.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Just it. It happens sometimes it’s yeah.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
But, as far as known, abilities to like hack while in a meeting, and get the co-host permission I have, I don’t think that exists.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
No no zoom’s, there is no way to do that. That to to that I’ve ever ever heard of. It’s usually human error.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Yeah.

[Janice]
Okay? Because the the tricky part about that is, it actually came under one of our members, over 30 years. It was his name end of the hacker had that person’s name, so I thought that was very odd.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, well, yeah, I mean, if I take on like, if I make my name, Janice and I come in with my camera off. And you all think that I’m Janice, and you make me a co-host, yeah, I can have all kinds of fun with that. Here’s the mitigation that I’ve suggested to groups to handle that. You know your co-hosts, your co-hosts aren’t hiding. Have them turn their camera on before you co-host him, even if it’s only for a second to see their face. And now you know it’s them, and then you can co-host them safely.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Alright. Leon.

[Leon R.]
Oh! Hi! Hi! My name’s Leon. I’m alcoholic, and I’m also from the Corona group and Back to Back. First thing, Tom, and Mark and Jan and Jennifer for their service. And also thank you, Tom. I had the problem in the top of my square with the static, and I came back to the room just in time, as you explained to that guy had to get rid of it.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Alright!

[Leon R.]
There are only God instances. So thank you. Back in.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Right, right. You’re welcome.

[Leon R.]
My comment is when someone comes to the meeting and we don’t know who they are. We PIN them until we find out who they are. I want someone to clarify once we PIN them. Are they today’s? Are they stationary in that upper left hand corner until we remove the PIN? Because you had mentioned Tom about them bouncing around, but once we PIN them, are they there throughout the meeting until we unpin them?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It depends. That’s a hard question. Actually, because it depends on your meeting settings. There’s a setting that, where you can arrange your tiles and then lock them in place, and that can be on or off. So it depends on that, too. I again recommend just using the participants putting in their letters real, quick, and and it pins them in the participants window. It’s just the easiest blanket way to handle it. No matter what’s going on. So the answer to that question unfortunately is maybe, it depends on other settings that are in your global settings and how it’s set up.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Yeah Leon, most typically, I’ve seen, we use the PIN feature a lot to watch folks. And it is impacted by people raising their hands so even if they’re pinned, and then that bomber, the other bomber comes and raises and lowers, raises and lowers his hands. Those first 4 screens are jumping around a little bit, so they’re not. They’ll still be up there, but maybe not in that first square

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
But name, and the participant, freezes them in your participant, always a better way to get them.

[Leon R.]
Okay. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you. We’re gonna take this through Jeff Z. We’re at the top of the hour, almost. But we don’t want to leave any of your hands up. So we’re gonna get through the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ending with Jeff Z. Go ahead, Debbie.

[Debbie C MA]
Hi! There! Thank you. I’m Debbie. I’m actually an Al-anon, and a double winner shared this information with this meeting with our group, because we had some disruptors recently, especially with the school break, and I am part of our steering committee. I’ve been a host I’ve been a chair. I’ve been all the things and I’m also like the tech director, although I’m not like a tech person, like the tech coordinator, anyway. But I do have some questions. And, Tom, I would love for you to come and meet with us so I’m gonna email you personally, from me, Debbie. And then also I will probably cc our groups email. We are called Daily Serenity for Women. DS4WAFG Al-anon family group. That would be really great if you could help us, because, you know, we are a 7 day a week meeting. We have a 100 people in our meeting. And okay, great, thank you.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, I’m sending you my phone number. Debbie Yeah, yeah, no. I see you I’m gonna give you my number here. And we’ll handle it.

[Debbie C MA]
Appreciate you. Because part of our thing. I’m going to write that down right now. So it’ll take 2¬†seconds. Appreciate that. Thank you so much. is we have multiple chairs and hosts that rotate service. So each month, you know, there’s people who serve every month as people who are new to service. And so because of that, you know, we had. We had a brand new host and chair a couple of weeks ago, and we had disrupters all over the meeting, and it was I was listening in on my phone and I wasn’t able to help at all. And I felt so totally helpless. But the people who jumped in and helped did a great job, but my my question is, is, having that multiple host and shares because each person who’s a host signs directly into our Alan on family Group Zoom account as the host to start the meeting, and because multiple people have that access. Now even if they haven’t hosted in a long time, is that a security issue? Should we be looking at some of that? We can talk about this offline. But I wanted to kind of put that out there. We’ve had some other issues.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
There’s an introduction here, though. Yeah, I’m hearing you on that. And the answer is potentially sure. It could. But you know we trust our trusted servants. Hopefully. You know, people who have the they they host credentials fairly well, you know. But yeah, of course it is. But at some point it gets a little silly with the distrust. Right, I mean, especially in al-anon I’m 35 years in al-anon. I know all about it. Okay, so we’ll have a good time when we get together on all this.

[Debbie C MA]
Yeah, yeah.  I appreciate that. Thank you. So my my other quick question is, and I haven’t read through obviously has been on the meeting. But is the raise hand feature a good idea for us to implement for everyone to have to raise their hand in order to share the meeting.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Love it, love it. Yeah, it’s absolutely my personal favorite.

[Debbie C MA]
Okay, be, okay. Okay.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
It’s what I recommend to, because it also helps you because you, the hands, are raised in order. Right? So you can instantly see who raised their hand first. And it’s just it’s just such a great.

[Debbie C MA]
Right. Yeah, because ours is you just unmute and say, Hi I’m Debbie, I’d like to share people just share. And so, okay, awesome. I’m gonna share some of this. We have our group conscience tomorrow. So, and this is one of the things on our on our agenda. So I’m gonna share some of what I learned today, and that we’d love to have you come and talk with our steering committee, and then we can share more later.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
And the guide also talks about the dangers of leaving the ability for anyone to unmute at any time on. And so, yeah, I highly recommend that, too.

[Debbie C MA]
Thank you alright. Appreciate you all. Thank you. Everyone, for your service today.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Debbie. Let’s try Marianne. If you’re still with us, Marianne. Okay, we’re gonna go over next to Jessica.

[Jessica]
Okay.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
I think Jessica is one of those very, very, very patient bombers. It’s astounding to me that some will just sit there for almost an hour waiting for that little bit of gibberish. Donna.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
But you see how fast we can get them. See it. It’s just a matter of just hanging in there.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You guys. Hi, Marianne, Donna donna sorry. Hi! Donna

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Donna I see you’re talking, but we can’t hear you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Your Mics not working, dear. No, you were unmuted. Let’s try again.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
No, you’re having an audio issue, darling. So sorry

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I don’t know. You type your question in the chat. If you have a question.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Go ahead and type it out. Donna, we’re gonna go to Kerry

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I’ll keep an eye out for it. Okay.

[Kerry ~~ Alma Wi]
Hello! All, I’m Kerry. I’ve got alcoholism. My home group listed last summer, and within 3 days we were bombed so heavy, the group decided we didn’t want nothing to do with OIAA, but now that I’ve learned a lot of these securities, I’m gonna up on them. And I’m gonna possibly, in the future, confront our group about possibly re listing with OIAA. But my other part is, I belong to a second group. My home group has an average about 15 people. I belong to a second group, and we most generally are lucky to have 5, and they’ve been listed with. OIAA for quite a few, well, I think, since pandemic began, and we’ve had some issues with bombers. But we’ve been pretty quick and getting taken care of them. And I really appreciate this forum. I really appreciate all your time and service. That’s all I had to say. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Kerry, thank you. Keep on trucking, man. Thank you. Go ahead. Jeff!

[Jeff Z. Dis. #25 – Area #75 So. WI.]
Jeff. Alcoholic from Fon du lac, Wisconsin. Glad to be here, glad to be sober. I want to thank Tom and Mark and Melinda, and Jennifer Jan. All you guys. Fantastic. My question, last weekend I was at a Uk thing over in London. There was a history presentation, and I, after listening to Janice, I’m just wondering if maybe somebody didn’t accidentally host somebody or co-host somebody that shouldn’t have been because they were able to screen share. Pretty graphic, different type things and stuff and not only that, after I left the meeting I went on to check my emails, and I had an email from somebody, 2 different 2 different back to back emails from somebody that was on that meeting that was was kicked out. I’m just wondering if they weren’t possibly co-hosted, that they would have screen share accessibility. And when I, when I, when I brought it to the, because I went back to the meeting to let them know not to open up with these emails because they could possibly contain a virus, several other members, had mentioned to the to the presenter that they had received emails as well. So I was just wondering how they would access my email. I never posted it or did anything. How would they have access to that?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
You know, I just had one of my MS brain farts. Please forgive me. Can you just repeat the gist of it? It happens sometimes because of my multiple sclerosis. Sorry.

[Jeff Z. Dis. #25 – Area #75 So. WI.]
Right they they were able to. Somebody was one of the bombers, was able to screen share, and they they were removed from the meeting. But then I then I received an email from that that bomber. I remember the name, and then, matter of fact, he sent me 2 emails. They were back to back, and I obviously didn’t open them, but it was from the Camberwell group, so I knew the name of the group, but I still didn’t want to open it up, because I recognized the name of the bomber.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, interesting!

[Jeff Z. Dis. #25 – Area #75 So. WI.]
So there were multiple emails that were sent out. How would he have access to email addresses?

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
You didn’t shared a home group list. Somehow, during the meeting?

[Jeff Z. Dis. #25 – Area #75 So. WI.]
No, nothing, I shared nothing whatsoever.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Then he must be a home, a member with a vendetta or somebody who knows you. I mean it. Just nothing else makes sense to me.

[Jeff Z. Dis. #25 – Area #75 So. WI.]
In London.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, I mean, you never know. It’s just pretty, with with this technology. It doesn’t really matter where anybody is anymore. This is truly global now.

[Jeff Z. Dis. #25 – Area #75 So. WI.]
Good morning, but you know, and like I say, I mean well, I’ve never been to a meeting in London before, and and then the thing of it was is Malta. After I reported it to the presenter, I texted him or I didn’t text them. I chatted him to let him know, and then he announced it at the meeting, and and several people in the audience said, yeah, I received an email, too. They were probably on their phone.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
There’s no real way to scrape or find an email through Zoom, by participating in a meeting. So somehow, somebody got a list of some of your emails somewhere.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
I just got something yeah. Couple of people sent me something in chat that makes perfect sense, and it may have to do with the whiteboard being turned on, because when you start a whiteboard which, if it’s turned on anyone can. You could see the email addresses of other people, especially if the start a whiteboard, outside of a meeting options turned on. Yeah, that that could be a way they got your email. So the people who wrote me about that. Yeah, I think you’re onto something there I have to verify that because I just looked at whiteboard when it first came out. I talked to Zoom about it, they said, This is for corporate environments. It’s not for you guys. I’m like, Okay, then I’m recommending we just turn it off. And I honestly didn’t research it much more because I’m just simply recommending turn it off. And that might be how it happened.

[Jeff Z. Dis. #25 – Area #75 So. WI.]
Okay, correct. Sounds good. Thank you. Appreciate your service.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
That’s good. Thanks, Jeff, thanks so much. Alright. We’re gonna take 2 more and call it a rap guys up, Martin, and then Brad will be our last

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, and if you guys wanna do a parking lot and more informal and I’m still willing to hang around. I don’t want anyone to leave with questions. Okay.

[Martin M]
Hi, Martin, alcoholic. Thank you so much. My home group has a laptop at the open meeting for hybrid meetings, and I want to shut off participants cameras. But will that shed off the camera at the laptop on the meeting, as they log in as the host on that laptop.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
No.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Shouldn’t no.

[Martin M]
Okay. So when I turn, when I hide  participant profile pictures and that it won’t delay the host camera if I set that in the in, the in the in the Zoom account?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah. But everybody else is. It’s in the meeting logged into that. Still, they’re still gonna be able to see each other. No problem. They just won’t see the host since you turned a camera.

[Martin M]
Oh, no, I want them to see the host doesn’t matter if anybody else in the meeting can see themselves because we had guys on there making faces because I had the microphones locked and everything.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] 17:07:03
Okay. I believe there is a setting that I haven’t fully researched yet. That might let you do that. But I’m not, I can’t answer that question right now, but it you email me I am more than happy to research it and find out if the is either a current feature or a planned feature of Zoom 4.

[Martin M]
Thank you so much. Have great night guys.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thanks, Martin, congratulations on the golden globe, too. Wait. That’s a different Martin. Brad W.

[Brad W. (Tampa FL)]
Okay. So I want to come back in and just reiterate our on your question. That was just asked by Jeff. So there’s 2 Whiteboards. One is the classic whiteboard, and one is the new whiteboard. So the new whiteboard, I have tested it and researched it. When I open a whiteboard on any meeting it will collect everyone’s email address on that meeting as soon as I open it. If somebody has not disabled the new whiteboard, and I come in as a participant, it shows up just like a share screen. You as a host, cannot stop me from doing it unless you’ve already disabled the new whiteboard. So I recommend disabling whiteboard altogether, because it collects everyone’s email and you can send anything you want.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah. And then the guide, I’m like, this is dangerous. Turn it off. And that’s why, because it just is so ridiculous

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Great in full Brad. Thank you, Mike F.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
How much? Hi, Mike.

[Mike F]
Yeah. Hi, Tom, all right, quick. One. So what we set up was, we added users to the kind of host organization. So we set one up call, you know, seechange@gmail.com set up zoom under that as a pro account. Then we’ve been adding the security team as members of the organization. So it moves them from whatever and that way we can have individual settings, for you know let members in, and so on. Do you advise doing that kind of thing? If that made sense?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Please rephrase it. One more time for me.

[Mike F]
So with some of our members, the the security team, and the the people that do service, I add them like I invite them to zoom to the organization that kinda has the parents where the account is held in the pro account. So they become members of that zoom account. Now that affords me the ability to give them extra privileges. You know they can bypass the waiting room. That kind of thing. So you know, the security team can come straight through the waiting room. But do you advise this kind of thing or not? Is, is there any pitfall?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
If you want to manage, sure, not a problem, but for now I’ve chosen to make that beyond the scope of the Security Guide, simply because I had to stop somewhere. I don’t want to confuse comers. But yeah, that. Yeah, I think, yeah, if you if you could manage that, that’s that’s cool.

[Jennifer A]
Mike, we we had one group where we did that where we had people link their personal accounts to the group’s admin account. One thing I would advise, or you know, let you know if that individual has their own paid personal account, and you are linked there, it’s gonna nullify their paid account, and they’ll get a refund.  But from experience that has happened to an individual in that group that was linked to the groups admin account. So they’re not locking in with the Admin password. Right? And they’re using the host key, but it canceled their personal paid subscription with Zoom because they were now linked with the group. So group decision, but just a warning that that can happen.

[Mike F]
Yeah, we have encountered that, and the other issue is, the people are using their work ID. You know you can’t transfer them from the work account across. Like I can only be a member of one account. One organization. So in that situation, what we do is we whitelist the domain for that company so you can. You can add Whitelist domains, and then it allows them to bypass the wedding room as well. It’s just it’s this, it takes a bit more management. And but that’s the way we do it. Yeah, we have saying, if you’ve got a paid account, it will refund you. And most people have happy with the refund.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Yeah, and these are powerful features. And remember, Zoom was designed to be a corporate client. So it does have some really powerful advanced features, but I think it’s beyond the scope of the Security Guide. You know what I mean. We’re just trying to run AA meetings.

[Mike F]
But thank you for your time, Tom. It’s been epic. Can I say, can I say your voice is like honey? I could listen to you all day, Buddy.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, you should hear my pleasant telephone and nighttime radio voice It’s the microphone.

[Debbie C MA]
I can imagine it.  Thanks for letting me ask again, Mark. Unmuting me. Quick question I forgot to ask before, because we’ve never used the waiting room feature. People are worried about that, and not being allowed in, like the being selective, does the waiting room like let you know? Like, who’s like the order of people coming in? Does that make sense? Or is it just, I know I used to waiting for smaller meetings, but with our meeting like as soon as we open our meeting it just like floods, like all the boxes pop up like a you know, and so with a waiting room it would just be one individual at a time, and and we would let them in that way.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
They’re in entrance order. They just stack up, and they keep stacking.

[Debbie C MA] .
Okay, okay, like the participant list in the meeting. Okay, perfect.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] .
Yes, it sits above, there’s an admit all button, too. So if you see 10 names, you recognize all 10, you hit one button and they’ll come in.

[Debbie C MA] .
Okay. Okay. Thank you. I know I’ll have more questions, Tom. And I’m gonna present this to our group. But I really appreciate your time.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] .
I love love, love the waiting room. It’s so so many problems in one shot.

[Debbie C MA]
Yeah. Yeah, thank you. And I’m gonna, tell my people tomorrow at our group conscience it’s highly recommended. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Okay. Teresa.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Oh, wait! You are muted. Hold on, Teresa. Let’s try one more time

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
There you go, can we

[TheresaB (TX)]
Hey, Teresa, still. How do we change the banner that is posted in the waiting room before people are led into the meeting?

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
In the Guide I explain how to do that. It’s right there, it’s a setting right under the waiting room banner. Do you even want one to start with? And then it’s got a section right under that in the zoom settings and your website, where you can go in and literally edit it right there. You can even put an image in there, and it’s got a little editor right built into the settings. Just look for it, you’ll find it. If it’s if you go through the guide in order it matches up with, you know the the columns and everything. Look for it, and just go through, and you’ll find it you. You will find it.

[TheresaB (TX)]
Okay. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Thank you, Teresa

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Two words I hate to hear the most, last call.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Let’s call Sheree..

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Hi Sheree.

[Sheree P] 17:14:41
Hi, I’m Sheree alcoholic. I just had one quick question when you mentioned the banners. It seems like we lost that feature when we enabled a host key.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 17:14:55
Correct that does have an impact.

[Sheree P] 17:14:59
Now, we’re unable to have the banner with the host key correct

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] 17:15:03
It’s one of those quirks of Zoom.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 17:15:07
Yeah, because you come in with the host key. If you enable waiting room, it just picks up like a default zoom waiting room message.

[Sheree P] 17:15:14
Okay. Alright. I thought maybe we could do it again. Thank you.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 17:15:20
Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen. Quite an afternoon, Tom. R. Thank you. Again last time I’ll tell you. There’s a sign up. There’s an email to send us. I think there’s already 67 emails in that box. There is a sign-up form. If you’d like to join a forming committee or zoom support group, for Ia to lend the support to groups, and that same form, you can tell us if you’re a group that needs some support, Tom can’t do this all by himself we’re gonna get him a team of people to back him up.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE] 17:15:58
That really means a lot to me, and don’t be offended if I don’t formally join your committee, because I already have. I’m always there. It’s just I’d need to remain liquid so I could be of maximum service.

[Mark M, Tech Chair] 17:16:11
You don’t need to join us. We’re gonna back you okay.

[Thom R. 10 Feb 1992 – ZOOM SECURITY GUIDE]
Well you’ve always had my heart. We’re lamp lighters, you know. So.

[Mark M, Tech Chair]
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we’re gonna call it. That’s a rap. God bless anybody! Want to lead us out in the responsibility statement.

[All]
I am responsible – when anyone, anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there, and for that: I am responsible