Zoom could owe you a pay-out after court ruling over privacy breaches

Zoom has settled a class-action lawsuit that alleged the company was in breach of privacy laws and put its users’ data at risk. As a result, it now needs to pay a small sum to all customers that can prove they were affected. 

The lawsuit alleged that the video conferencing app, Zoom Meetings, shared certain user information with third parties, did not do everything it could to prevent unwanted meeting disruption by third parties, and that the company falsely advertised its service as end-to-end encrypted.

In the legal notice of class-action settlement, which was published on the Zoom Meetings Class Action website, it was said that Zoom “denies any liability whatsoever, and believes that no member of the Settlement Class, including the Plaintiffs, has sustained any damages or injuries due to these allegations”.

However, because the company has decided to settle the suit, it is still required to issue compensation.

Who is eligible for compensation from Zoom?

Zoom will be paying out $ 85 million in total, and also agreed to change its policies and practices to benefit the members of the settlement class.

It seems that quite a large number of people are eligible to receive a small amount of compensation as a result. They fall into two categories: paying customers and those who use the free version.

Paying users that subscribed between March 30, 2016 and July 30, 2021 can file a claim for $ 25, or 15% of the subscription fee, whichever sum is greater. Those who used the free version by registering an account or downloading the Zoom Meeting app during the same time frame can file a claim for $ 15.

It’s important to keep in mind that the sum could change, depending on the number of people who file the claim. The claims must be submitted by March 5, 2022, with the final approval hearing scheduled for April 7, 2022.

Those who used an enterprise-level account or government account are not eligible for any compensation.

Claims can be filed here.

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Next WordPress release delayed after ‘large red flags’ identified

The WordPress developers have decided to push back the release of the next major version of the popular content management system (CMS) to January, 2022, after some developers expressed concern about the pace of development.

“I think there are some large red flags here that some things are not ready for 5.9….Overall, it seems like right now we are rushing things in a dangerous way,” wrote Addison Stavlo, a contributor to WordPress’ Gutenberg editor.

The original plan was to release WordPress 5.9 in mid December, 2021. However, things weren’t smooth during the alpha release cycle, forcing core developers to make several changes.

Better late than sorry

Not impressed by the changes to “so many things at the last minute,” Stavlo wondered why delaying the release wouldn’t be a better idea than making “regrettable decisions.”

As she announced the revised schedule Tonya Mork, Core Tech Lead for the 5.9 release, shared that the team had two options; either move the major features that had unresolved issues to the WordPress 6.0 release, or delay the release of WordPress 5.9. 

After careful deliberation, the core developers decided that the issues would be best handled now than later.

“The 6.0 release isn’t due until April 2022—too long for the community to wait for them [the features]. After processing this list of issues, Core Editor team saw the features could ship in 5.9 with the revised schedule. This decision, to delay the 5.9 release, was not made lightly,” explains Mork.

5.9 is still in feature freeze, and Mork stresses that the developers will use the elongated development period to iron out the issues and help 5.9 get to a Stable state.

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