Chatham-Kent police are investigating a disturbing incident where a Zoom meeting was interrupted with images of child pornography.
Police received a call Thursday night that a local Zoom meeting involving more than 200 talking about an upcoming Miracle Day Food Drive was hacked.
The Criminal Investigations Branch and Internet Child Exploitation Unit have taken over the investigation.
Police are worried about the safety of those involved in the video and to identify who is responsible for sharing the disturbing video.
Police want to remind people that accessing or possessing child pornography is punishable with a prison term.
Anyone with information is asked to call Chatham-Kent police or Crime Stoppers.
Zoom has responded with the following statement:
This incident is truly devastating and appalling, and our user policies explicitly prohibit any obscene, indecent, illegal or violent activity or content on the platform.
We are looking into this specific incident to ensure the appropriate action is taken.
Zoom strongly condemns such behaviour and recently updated several features to help our users more easily protect their meetings.
We have enabled meeting passwords and virtual waiting rooms by default for users enrolled in our K-12 program school program, as well as our Free Basic and Single Pro users.
For all users, we have made the Zoom Meeting ID less visible to help prevent unintended sharing, and we have added a new Security icon to the Zoom meeting controls for all hosts to help them quickly access in-meeting security features, including the ability to remove participants and lock meetings, among other actions.
In the latest version of Zoom, there is a new 'Report a User' feature in the Security icon for meeting hosts and co-hosts to flag users, who are misusing the platform, to our Trust & Safety team.
We encourage users to report any incidents of this kind either to Zoom so we can take appropriate action or directly to law enforcement authorities.