 This week started with me getting zoom bombed and it was one of the most traumatic couple minutes I've experienced in quite a while So here's what happens. Here's what a zoom bombing experience is like I'll describe it in words because I don't want to show you what it was actually like because it like I said traumatic So I was running a public zoom meeting doing a Q&A about my subject area and Invited you know my my audience. I put it on Facebook as a public event page mistake number one with my zoom link Not it's not a mistake to use a public event page on Facebook But to put my zoom link in there Trying to make it easier for my audience to find it. That was a mistake. So 15 minutes into my meeting it started first of all I suddenly started seeing Somebody writing on my screen f you see, you know, etc. So large You know curse word and then suddenly they took over my screen They shared their screen with very gross pornographic videos Right there on the screen. Of course. I was shocked. I was in shock for a couple seconds like what's going on This has never happened to me in Many years of using zoom I do I've done I've accounted something like over a thousand zoom meetings many of them group meetings and this has never happened before so gross pornographic images came videos came there and Other people on unmuted and started saying racist things verbally and then Once I disabled the ability for people to screen share and to unmute Then they started chatting because chatting, you know typing in Hi, everyone. How's everyone going and asking for people's questions and seeing their comments and those that's a very valuable part of a Zoom meeting you want to get the people's feedback and get their get the pulse of what's what they're thinking and Well, they started putting Racist and hateful just really terrible chat messages in there and not only were they doing that They even renamed Themselves as other legitimate participants in the meeting. Yes. So one of them renamed them as you rename themselves as me another first several people renamed themselves as other people that I that I personally knew as Very thoughtful students of mine, you know renamed and then read after renaming themselves impersonating them They've then chatted the raceful things that of course those real people would never say so Once I started, you know, once I saw people doing these kinds of things Of course, I try to remove them from the meeting as fast as I could But it was a coordinated group attack. This all happened in a matter of three to five minutes Before I finally ended the meeting for everybody. So in the first, you know 10 seconds I was in shock not knowing what to do and then I started thinking wow, how are they doing this? Okay, let me restrict my screen sharing capability. Okay, let me not let people be able to speak by not allowing them to unmute Okay, let me stop allow them not to and let me disable the ability for them not to rename themselves I was starting to do these things once I realized what they were doing but the problem was that and Then of course once I started realizing was a group of people. I locked the room so that nobody else could come in But then I still couldn't remove the right people because they had already they are once they came in They renamed themselves. I didn't know which one was the correct, you know, Alisa, which one was the right, you know Jennifer or whatever that I knew personally right who was right one couldn't tell so I You know, I fortunately of course that ruined my meeting that that had to Get canceled early or ended early and it was a traumatic experience for everybody who was there But especially for me the facilitator and speaker You know as a solopreneur Chances are you're probably doing most of your group zoom meetings by yourself You probably don't have an assistant for those of you who have an assistant or facilitator who can help with this kind of thing Wonderful, but for those of us who don't we have to think of ways to prevent the trolls from coming in at all Okay, and that's that's what I want to share with you today is I thought a lot about how to You know because the thing is I Actually regularly need my attendees to share their screen with me so I can help them with something on their website Or to show me something else that they're looking at or My attendees need to share their screen with me. They need to chat They sometimes need to rename themselves because they join the zoom meeting as their spouse on their spouse's computer Or they join their zoom meeting from their phone and then their name says iPhone So I don't know who they are. They have to rename so I have to keep these features available I can't restrict screen sharing. I can't restrict chatting. I can't restrict unmuting sometimes they unmute to Say, hey George, you're still on the wrong slide or whatever it is that they need to to alert me of right? I can't restrict the chat because that's how so many so many people get to know each other in my meetings and former community so I Most of the articles and videos You know articles you read or videos you watch about preventing zoom bombing will tell you to do these things restrict the screen sharing restrict the chat restrict the the muting restrict people of Course we could do that But that would be restricting the freedom of our attendees to actually interact with us Which is what we need to build community to build a relationship with our audience So the real answer and and also some people say well George, you have to stop using zoom Because zoom is not a secure platform The people who say that in my opinion don't really understand What zoom bombing is about the the zoom bombers the people that the trolls the trolls who are doing this They're looking for easy targets They're not going and look and trying to guess zoom meeting numbers because zoom meeting numbers are always What is it like? something like Seven or eight digits long. No one is gonna guess your meeting number and be able to show up at the right time. Nobody is Capable and yes, I've heard about software that can find zoom meeting numbers and test But to be honest, I have never I don't think the trolls who typically teenage boys You know what what's still underdeveloped brains and too much testosterone They're not using sophisticated methods like that. Okay. It's not that what what they're doing and I'll show you real quick They're simply going onto places like Facebook and going to the event section of Facebook and searching zoom Okay, and when you do that, it's within minutes You can find lots of zoom meeting IDs for public meetings I did I'm not going to show you on the screen because I don't want to well I mean, I'm sure there's the trolls already know how to do this But but I have a blog post and if you read the blog post associated with this video There's a link that shows you wow. It's easy for you to find and within two or three minutes several free Public Facebook event pages that have their zoom meeting IDs listed like mine was So I'm not the only one getting bomb lots and lots of people are getting bomb a zoom bomb. So The solution so people said we'll stop using zoom use something else Well, if I use something else, I still need if I'm doing a might if I'm doing a public Free Meeting where I want lots of people there interacting with me I still need people to register in some way and if I allow the public to register why couldn't trolls register Why couldn't spammers and hackers register? It doesn't meeting if you go it doesn't matter if you go to Webex or Google Meet or you know Other tools that come out that are supposedly more secure if anyone can register for your meeting anyone can bomb your meeting So I thought a lot about this and really the most secure and practical solution is To have a strategy for preventing for vetting the people who sign up And if you vet the people who sign up for your meetings, it doesn't matter if you use zoom or something else You're vetting the people who have the link who have the access information to your to your meeting That's what you need to do so there are basically two options for Creating a public large meeting Where you vet the participants two options? I'm going to share with you one option is This you selectively invite, but then you stream publicly. Let me explain what I mean First you you what what I know you want to do is you the reason why you're having a lot What you're trying to have is a large public meeting, right? What you're really trying to do is to get that content of that meeting out to many people So first of all, let's let's get clear on something here if you just want to get your content out to many people You can simply do a Facebook live or a YouTube live video You know and and have people chat and you can look at the the chat along the way like I do with my videos And people can you know people can give you questions through the chat Through Facebook or YouTube while on zoom you're by yourself. That's the most secure and And still very public way of getting your content out there. However, what if You want to interact with some people right in the zoom meeting and Still have the public be able to see it then you selectively invite Some people that you already know personally that you think would be good attendees that you would like to interact with so let's say five or ten of your clients or Colleagues or fans or friends five ten fifteen twenty however many you want to do this for You invite those people only you send them the zoom link and Simply tell them listen. Please keep the zoom link zoom link private It should never be shared anywhere and I've been doing this. I've been first of all I should have said this earlier. I'm not going to change anything For my private meetings and for my paid zoom meetings. That's very important to say I've like I said, I've done over a thousand zoom meetings. Most of them group meetings In my client group and in my paid courses Never has there been random people who joined let alone trolls and zoom bombers Because why the zoom bombers aren't going to pay money to join a meeting to bomb it It's ridiculous. You can easily find lots of free ones. Why would they pay for a course to go there? No, they're not gonna do that They're also not going to join private meetings if you only sent the meeting ID out to your clients or to your Set number of colleagues and every time I do that I always tell I put the zoom meeting link and underneath that I put in parentheses Please keep the zoom link private going forward. I'm going to add another line. Do not share it anywhere to Respect the privacy of the attendees and the security of meeting whatever you want to say But that's all you have to do. So private meetings paid meetings. No problem. All I'm talking about is public free Zoom meetings. So like I said the first method selectively invite Three five ten twenty people that you want to interact with Okay, give them a zoom meeting ID. Tell them not to share it. Okay, and then once you're on the zoom meeting You can then stream that meeting through Facebook live or YouTube live and have the entire public be able to watch and Chat in Facebook or YouTube and yes, you might say, well, can't they do racist or bad? You know spam type of chats in Facebook or YouTube they could but we're all more used to seeing okay There's spam. We kind of ignore just it's just a chat. It's not it's not a video that's playing right on your meeting or anything It's just a chat and also you're allowing Facebook and YouTube to do the to do a bit of vetting for you because YouTube and Facebook quickly shut out spammers and People like that. So anyway, so selectively invite people tell them it's private link and Stream publicly if you want that content out public or if you don't want to stream public and have to deal with the comments That are coming through then just record your zoom meeting and then share it as a video later Then you're not streaming in you don't have to worry about the chat thread in real time on Facebook or YouTube. Got it selectively invite Record it optionally you can stream that publicly. Otherwise just upload the recording later because that's option number one selectively invite Maybe stream publicly or just share the video later The second option is if you really want a large number of people interacting with each other So it's again, it's a free public zoom meeting where you want Dozens or even hundreds of people interacting with each other. Here's what you need to do you need to Have people register Okay, and my suggestion is to use mail chimp or whatever email newsletter software You use a Weber constant contact, whatever but use an email newsletter software to take registration So people are essentially signing up signing up for a mailing list for that event about that event Okay, so so create a mailing list just for that event have people sign up and in the sign-up process Ask them at least one open-ended question to vet their interest in the event. So you might want to ask Please describe with at least 15 to 20 words your interest in this topic Okay, something like that then those you know For example, if I'm asking people to sign up to talk about authentic marketing Then they're gonna say well, I'm interested in authentic marketing because I've I've been I've seen the mainstream ways of marketing I don't like the pop-ups. I don't like this the false scarcity and things like that That's why I want to talk with you. Okay, so this person clearly has a passion has an interest in this topic So I know that that person is legit. So in other words, you ask an open-ended question In your registration besides their email address and their name That open-ended questions, so that's the first thing you do is to have an open-ended question in your registration Trolls and zoom bombers aren't going to go through the trouble of thoughtfully answering an open-ended question because again They're looking for easy targets and looking for just zoom links that are freely available on the internet They can bomb I mean, there are so many of them out there at any time of the day that zoom bombers can just go there They're not gonna worry about a registration form and answering it correctly. Got it okay, so registration form open-ended question thoughtful question and then also very importantly you need to Be clear in your registration marketing of the event that the event registration ends Four hours before the event starts you need to make that clear in the marketing of the event event that registration ends four hours before it starts Which means that you need to schedule for yourself Three hours before the event starts you need to just have cleared your calendar so that three hours before the event starts Oh, sorry you for four hours, right? But in in the registration confirmation page So once they register they finish registering the confirmation page and email Should not have the zoom link. Let me repeat that the confirmation page and email should not have the zoom link But they should explain thank you for registering to maintain the privacy. We are vetting each attendee and If you are accepted into the event, we will email you the zoom link two hours before the event Got it Tell them you'll email them the zoom link two hours before okay So three hours before the event you sit down at the computer and you look at all the event registrations and the answers Okay, and if there's any answers that are super short or questionable you then email that person To say if you're if you're able to respond before the event We can still let you in but please let us know your interest because we need a longer response than this That's it And then if they have any email you with enough time for you to send it to them great If not just then if we don't get your response in time, we will send you the recording afterwards Thank you for your interest So so that's it so then you you you you delete or respond to people who seem suspicious and The remaining people you send them through the mailing list software like Mailchimp or cause because they already they already signed up So you delete the ones who are suspicious maybe and you send the zoom link Two hours before the event to the people who are legit. That's it That's simple. Remember they're telling them to keep the zoom link private and I can almost guarantee you by doing that You will never have to experience the zoom bombing experience, which is like I said terrible It's a humiliating. It's shocking. It's traumatic It made me not want to do zoom meetings for a while But I I kept going and it's really not not a problem unless you post it publicly Remember, how did they find my zoom meeting because it was a public Facebook event page with the zoom meeting ID and and also I streamed my my meeting publicly on Facebook live with the zoom meeting ID in the Facebook event Sorry in the Facebook video Description area to so just don't put your zoom meeting ID zoom meeting links anywhere publicly And you should be fine. That's really the main message So I hope this is helpful and I look forward to seeing if you have any questions or any comments And in fact, I am streaming this on Facebook live right now So I'm going to give you a moment to add a comment below While I look at the comments and and see if there are any questions that I should answer right now So go ahead and comment below while I look for the comments that are live here Yes, okay, and thank you for those of you who are joining me live Liz Peter Prem Tina Susan Captain So that's it. I I'm trying to balance between Security and privacy on the one hand and practicality and freedom on the other hand That's the balance because most people who do security Take it way too far and it's like every everyone must be perfectly safe There'll never be any danger which also means we cannot interact with each other I mean if I could talk about the corona virus, I mean, that's that's kind of like what we're doing here Decidely too. It's like so much lockdown So that that the economy is is just terrible for everybody because we can't interact with each other Anyway, so it's this balance between security privacy and and freedom and and Community on the other side. That's the balance here. That's what I that's the methods that I'm showing you that will Achieve those aims for zoom public free beating. So all right. I'm George cow authentic business coach I usually talk about building a business authentically so only subscribe to this channel if you actually want to learn about Building a solopreneur business in an authentic honest way doing marketing honestly and with love Otherwise if you're just here for zoom advice, don't subscribe to my channel. I don't usually talk about zoom stuff So alright, okay, I'll see you in the next video about authentic business or authentic marketing. See you soon. Bye. Bye