(Reuters) – Scottish Swimming has apologized to its aquatic community after an online training session with its elite athletes was crashed by a ‘zoom-bomber’, who subjected around 300 participants to “disturbing content” on Tuesday.
The event was hosted on video conferencing application Zoom, which has faced a backlash from users worried about the lack of end-to-end encryption of meeting sessions and ‘zoombombing’, where uninvited guests gain entry and disrupt proceedings.
“Scottish Swimming sincerely apologizes for the incident that happened this morning during an organized Zoom event, where the aquatics community were invited to work out alongside our performance athletes,” Scottish Swimming said in a statement https://www.scottishswimming.com/newsroom/news/2020/04/ss-statement-on-zoom-event.aspx.
“At the end of last week we shared information about the workout across social media platforms, asking those interested in participating to log into a link that was shared publicly this morning.
“Unfortunately the link was ‘zoom-bombed’ with disturbing content shared with circa 300 people that had signed in to the event. The video was immediately shut down and the incident referred to the police and their cyber-crime unit.”
Scottish Swimming said it would continue to engage with its aquatic community during the lockdown due to the new coronavirus pandemic and ensure there is no repeat of Tuesday’s incident.
“At a time when the aquatics community was pulling together and supporting one another so positively, it’s upsetting to have a minority cause upset and distress during the lockdown,” the governing body added.
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Davis)
