Social distancing due to COVID-19 is making people spend more time online. They are also participating in video calls. Seeing this trend, Facebook announced Messenger Rooms. This time total privacy has been taken care, as per Facebook. One can take control of these rooms as well.
The next questions which comes in mind how can one control the rooms, how can one make the rooms and what all can be done? Simply use the Messenger or Facebook to create and join rooms. Gradually, Instagram, WhatsApp and Portal can also be used to create these rooms.
Whoever creates the room also controls who can join the room. Not only this, the person can also decide to share the link and also how easy it is to find the room. There are some default settings when you create a room. For e.g, when you use a Facebook group to create rooms, the members of the group by default become a part of these rooms.
Some of the other features of the Messenger Rooms include:-
- Once the call starts, the rooms are locked and does not allow anyone to join in. However, the rooms created through Facebook groups, gives permission for the group admin to join.
- The person who creates rooms is also authorized to remove participants which he/she feels are not ok or are unwanted. However if the person moves out, the room gets locked automatically. The group admin must unlock the rooms for others to take part in the calls.
- Even in a locked room, if you feel safety issues/concerns, you can move out at anytime.
- Complain to Facebook,if you feel that rooms are violating certain community standards as set by Facebook. Read the terms and conditions properly at https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards
- After you block anyone on Facebook/Messenger, Facebook will not inform them. However, once the blocked person logs into Messenger/Facebook, neither that person can join your room nor you can join the room of the blocked person.
- When you ask participants who are not your friends on Facebook to join the rooms, they will only be able to hear what you say in the rooms or see what you share in the rooms. Nothing more than this. However, the information which you have posted on the Facebook profile , open to public will also be seen by these participants.
- If anyone joins the room without logging into Facebook, they are required to share their names only. This helps in their identification while being in the room.
As per Facebook, they do not watch the video calls or listen to the audio calls of the rooms. This holdstrue irrespective of the fact whether you join the rooms by using your Facebook account or you have come in as a guest.
- In order to monitor the various issues, complaints arising from the rooms, Facebook has partners (outside vendors) to attend to all these. Facebook ensures with its partners to maintain total confidentiality of the data and other security obligations.
- Facebook also said that they have taken various measures with their security teams to avoid hacking. Rooms links have different random characters, digits numbers and letters which perhaps makes it difficult for hacking.
- The data collected from rooms is used only to provide a better experience. The audio and video calls are not informed to ads. Even ads are not shown in the rooms.
- Information like device and browser type is used for those who have logged in to rooms without Facebook account. Again, Facebook claims that this data is only used for improving the product experience.
- Like Messenger, the same technology is used in the rooms for encryption of both audio and video conversations. Rooms are not end-to-end encrypted. Facebook says that they are trying to overcome the significant challenges to providing end-to-end encryption for video calling with large groups of people.
Also Read: Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing apps are at high hacking risk
