WebinarTV, a site that scrapes Zoom webinars without permission, has downloaded and posted Zoom Webinars for anonymous addiction recovery meetings, support groups for caregivers and people who suffer from chronic illness, and a meeting of nudists.WebinarTV\u2019s Michael Robertson told me that the company asks every single person for permission to \u201cpromote\u201d their webinars, but these specific examples show that WebinarTV scrapes and shares the videos on its site before asking for permission and that some people are not aware that this is happening to them.\u201cAs with all of our support group meetings, this meeting was not intended to be recorded, but rather to be a private discussion among participants,\u201d Kimberly Dorris, executive director at the Graves\u2019 Disease & Thyroid Foundation (GDATF), which hosted a Zoom session which vetted participants, and which still ended up on WebinarTV, wrote in a post about the meeting being uploaded to WebinarTV. That post was titled \u201cA Warning For Patient Communities Connecting on Zoom.\u201dI first reported about WebinarTV in March, after a teacher told me that a sensitive meeting he held on Zoom for educators who wanted to protect their students from ICE raids ended up on the site. The teacher found out about the video when a someone calling themselvesSarah Blair, which appears to be an AI-generated persona, sent him an email letting him know that the meeting was posted to WebinarTV and also turned into an AI-generated podcast. The teacher asked WebinarTV to take down the meeting because it could put some of the participants in danger, and WebinarTV removed it shortly after.\u00a0WebinarTV claims it hosts more than 200,000 Zoom webinars it scraped this way.\u00a0After I published the story, several people who use Zoom regularly for meetings or webinars they consider private checked to see if their Zoom videos were posted to WebinarTV and got in touch with me.\u00a0Gillian Brockwell, a journalist and 404 Media reader who goes to addiction recovery meetings on Zoom searched WebinarTV for her own meeting after seeing my story. She didn\u2019t find her own meetings, but flagged several other meetings that were clearly meant to be for people who want to preserve their anonymity.\u00a0One meeting posted to WebinarTV for \u201cpanic anonymous,\u201d or people who suffer from panic and high anxiety, was described as a \u201ca confidential group that bridges decades of clinical biofeedback practice with modern wearable technology.\u201d The recording of the webinar posted to WebinarTV included participants\u2019 full names and shows their faces.\u00a0A 12 steps and faith-based recovery meeting for people with substance abuse issues also shows participants full names and faces.\u00a0“If I found out I was in one of these meetings captured by WebinarTV, I would feel terrified and betrayed, especially if I were in early recovery,” Brockwell told me. “These meetings are clearly meant to be confidential and anonymous, and anonymity is a key component of mutual-support and 12-step recovery models. It allows people a pathway through the stigma that so often prevents them from seeking help, and members sharing openly about some of the most humiliating moments in their lives \u2013 things they might never say in public \u2013 is a key part of ‘identifying in.'”\u00a0\u201cI hosted a meeting last night that was intended to be for family members of patients with Graves’ disease, thyroid eye disease, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis,\u201d Dorris from the GDATF told me in an email in March. \u201cThe link to *register* was public, but in order to receive the joining link, you had to fill out a questionnaire.\u201dThe description for the Zoom meeting was: \u201cHas a loved one been diagnosed with Graves\u2019 disease, thyroid eye disease, or Hashimoto\u2019s thyroiditis? Join us for a short presentation followed by an interactive discussion with people who understand what your family is going through! This meeting is intended for family members and caregivers only. If you are a researcher, industry representative, etc. please contact GDATF at info@gdatf.org to discuss how we can better assist you.\u201dThe registration form specifically asked potential participants whether they were attending in support of or on behalf of someone impacted by these conditions, and were admitted to the meeting one at a time from a Zoom waiting room. Dorris said that no visible AI and transcription tools were running.\u00a0One meeting of nudists, or \u201cnaturists,\u201d also featured every participant\u2019s face and name, and some appeared shirtless on camera. It\u2019s not clear if this meeting was designed to be private nor if the participants know the meeting was recorded and posted on WebinarTV.\u00a0Robertson told me that WebinarTV is not violating these people\u2019s privacy because the site only scrapes Zoom webinars as opposed to Zoom meetings. Zoom webinars work similarly to a regular Zoom meeting, but are intended for larger audiences with features like polling, breakout rooms, and EventBrite integrations.\u00a0\u201cWebinars are no different than Facebook Live, X broadcast, or Youtube Live. They are broadcast to the public. This is why we have 200,000 webinars and zero issues to date,\u201d Robertson told me. \u201cWe contact every host, twice to make sure they want the promotion. We’re the only search engine that does this. Also we make it one click easy to remove. Go try and get something removed from any other search engine.\u201d Robertson is of course ignoring the fact that many people organizing or joining these sessions, even if they are technically webinars, expect them to be private or limited to just the participants.When I reached out to Zoom in March it said that based on its review WebinarTV accesses meetings using links that have been shared publicly, then records the sessions using browser extension or \u201cother tools.\u201d\u00a0\u201cBecause these recordings occur on the participant\u2019s device and outside of Zoom\u2019s environment, no platform\u2014including Zoom\u2014has the technical ability to fully prevent third-party screen recording,\u201d the spokesperson said.\u00a0\u201cWhile it is true that our meeting wasn\u2019t infiltrated due to a technical flaw from Zoom, as a customer, I would still like to see Zoom speak out against companies like WebinarTV that send bots with fake identities to infiltrate meetings and covertly record participants who had a reasonable expectation of privacy,\u201d Dorris told me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"