covering the week's top tech stories with a slight linux bias zoom has added end-to-end encryption to its video conferencing service at no additional cost for all users whether they are paying subscribers or not the feature has been long awaited given the service's massive adoption as a result of pandemic lockdowns something that swung a spotlight on its patchy security the company announced on tuesday that the new feature is available now as a technical preview for the next 30 days and is looking for user feedback before rolling it out on mass zoom see so jason lee gives kudos to keybase who joined the company in may to develop the security feature taking just six months to do so zoom says its end-to-end encryption will use 256-bit aes gcm and a secure key exchange is performed beforehand to ensure only the participants on the call can decrypt each other's part of the conversations and no eavesdroppers not even zoom itself can listen in zoom had already encrypted some of its uh communications though it wasn't truly end to end until now in order to use the end-to-end encryption and account admin has to enable the feature zoom's end-to-end encryption is limited to 200 participants so for larger meetings where encryption may not be a needed feature such as a public forum or a digital comic con it can be disabled to allow more people to join other restrictions of the service are a lack of cloud recording and live transcription breakout rooms polling and one-to-one private chats are also unavailable when end-to-end encryption are on as are live emojis perhaps the biggest caveat of all though is that each user must have the official zoom client installed in order to participate so browser-based participation will not be available for encrypted meetings third-party zoom clients will also not work when end-to-end encryption is enabled the feature is available on new releases of the zoom software for mac os windows android linux and ios big thanks to roy w nash and our community of viewers for submitting stories to us this week thanks for watching the category 5 dot tv newsroom don't forget to like and subscribe and subscribe for all your tech news with a slight linux bias and if you appreciate what we do become a patron at patreon.com category5 from the category 5 dot tv newsroom i'm becca ferguson [Music]