The Saint Paulus Lutheran Church in San Francisco and nine of their members have filed a class action lawsuit against Zoom after a hacker took over their bible study and played videos of children and an infant being sexually abused.
When Heddi Cundle, one of the members of the church, reached out to Zoom about what happened, she was told that the hacker was a serial offender and that they had previously reached out to authorities. The app did not provide any assurance that it would not happen again.
Cundle, completely unsatisfied with the popular teleconferencing app’s response, filed a class action lawsuit on Wednesday, the Washington Examiner reports.
“Zoombombing,” when hackers or trolls take over a Zoom call, has become a major problem during the coronavirus pandemic as people are being forced to work and study from home. Once the hacker had taken over the conference, there was nothing that the bible study group could do. When they attempted to restart the call, it happened again.
The complaint says that by not taking steps to protect people from the pornography, Zoom “prioritizes profit and revenue over data protection and user security.”
“Instead of providing Saint Paulus and its congregants with a password-protected and secure video conferencing platform, Zoom allowed a ‘known offender’ — one who ‘has been reported multiple times to the authorities’ — to Zoombomb Saint Paulus’s May 6, 2020 bible-study class,” the complaint says. “As a result, Ms. Cundle, Saint Paulus’s administrator, and other attendees of the bible-study class — most of whom were senior citizens — had their computer screens hijacked and their control buttons disabled while being forced to watch pornographic video footages.”
“The footages were sick and sickening — portraying adults engaging in sexual acts with each other and performing sexual acts on infants and children, in addition to physically abusing them,” the lawsuit continues.
The lawsuit notes that the bible study members are not the only victims, even young school children have been subjected to traumatizing content while taking classes online.
An attorney representing the bible study group and the church said that they are seeking to make Zoom pay for counseling and other damages that resulted from the traumatic experience.
“This violation of the church’s sanctity was a direct result of Zoom prioritizing profit over user security,” attorney Albert Chang told the Examiner. “Saint Paulus looks forward to proving its case in court on behalf of all victims of Zoom’s deceptive business practices and holding Zoom accountable for its misconduct.”
A Unitarian church in Waco, Texas, was also “Zoombombed” with child sexual abuse videos in April.