Zoom will soon let some users choose which countries their data is routed through

As part of its continuing efforts to regain trust following a series of privacy and security scandals, Zoom has announced that it is introducing the option for users to choose which countries their data is routed through.

The move comes after concerns were voiced at Zoom's admission that some US calls were being routed through China. The new option will allow users to opt in or out of specific data center regions; unfortunately, this feature will not be made available to everyone.

See also:

• Zoom is taking steps to improve privacy and security, and to prevent Zoombombing
• Google bans Zoom and the US senate warns against its use
• Zoom CEO and other executives offloaded millions of dollars of shares before privacy and security scandals

Zoom says that as of April 18, administrators and owners of paid accounts will be able to customize which data center regions their account can use for its real-time meeting traffic. The key thing to note here is that free customers will not be granted this privilege.

It is not clear why Zoom has chosen to roll this feature out on a Saturday.

But while the new routing customization options will be welcomed by paying customers, Zoom points it will not be possible able to change or opt out of your default region. The default region is locked and is the one from which an account is provisioned -- the US in most cases.

In a blog post announcing the upcoming change, Zoom CTO Brendan Ittelson provides a few additional details:

• Zoom provides services out of our own Zoom-managed colocation centers, as well as a robust public cloud architecture. The regional selection will be honored regardless of which underlying resource is leveraged for the meeting.
• Zoom Conference Room Connectors (CRCs) in disabled regions will not be allowed to connect to meetings or webinars.
• Regional dial-in numbers are disabled when a region is disabled.
• Currently, our data centers are grouped into these regions: the United States, Canada, Europe, India, Australia, China, Latin America, and Japan/Hong Kong.
• Free users will be locked to data centers within their default region where their account is provisioned. For the majority of our free users, this is the United States. Data of free users outside of China will never be routed through China.
• For users based in China, if your account admin has not opted into the China data center by April 25, your account will not be able to connect to our mainland China data center for data transit.
• As a reminder, meeting servers in China have always been geofenced with the goal of ensuring that meeting data of users outside of China, stays outside of China. On April 3, we removed all of our HTTPS tunneling servers in China to prevent any inadvertent connection through China.

See also: Michael Vi / Shutterstock