Google Meet vs. Google Duo: Which one is best for you? - Android Central

Google Meet vs. Google Duo: Which one is best for you? - Android Central
Is Zoom safe to use? Here's what you need to know - telegraphherald.com
Apple and Google update joint coronavirus tracing tech to improve user privacy and developer flexibility - TechCrunch

Posted: 06 May 2020 06:15 AM PDT

Best for meetings

Great for families

Google Meet is a fantastic service for large-scale meetings. It works natively in a browser, lets you easily share your screen, has robust collaboration tools, and now offers a grid layout for calls. Encryption is enabled automatically, you can easily record your meetings, and the best part is that it is now freely available for everybody to use.

Free / $6 per month at Google

Pros

Now free for everyone
Works natively in a browser
Encryption enabled by default
Grid layout for video calls
Easy screen sharing and collaboration

Cons

Needs a Google account
Some features require paid plan

Google Duo is better suited for mobile video calls or casual conversations. The service now lets you make video calls with up to 12 members, and the AR effects on offer make video calls fun and engaging. The limited participant size means you cannot realistically use Duo for meetings, but it is a fantastic tool for staying connected to friends and family.

Free at Google

Pros

Designed for one-on-one communication
Rock-solid connectivity
End-to-end encryption
Fun AR filters
Now works with 12 participants

Cons

Not suited for large-scale meetings
Cannot add people to ongoing calls

Google now has two video calling services on offer. Duo continues to be a standout option for mobile video calls, and with Meet now going free, there's a new alternative for hosting large gatherings. Meet was designed with large-scale business meetings in mind and was originally limited to Google's G Suite business customers. The service is now rolling out to everyone, and the best part is that there are no usage limits for three months. Here are all the differences between Google Meet and Google Duo, and how to pick the service that's better suited for your needs.

Two Google services for two different use cases

Google Meet vs. Google Duo

Source: Apoorva Bhardwaj / Android Central

Here's an easy way to think of the differences between Google Meet and Google Duo. Meet is the ideal platform for conducting large-scale meetings, whereas Duo is better suited for informal gatherings, like talking to your friends and family or hosting a virtual game night.

Here's a breakdown of the two services to give you a better idea of what's on offer:

	Google Meet	Google Duo
Max participants	250	12
Share screen	✔	❌
Record meetings	✔	❌
Email integration	Gmail / Outlook	❌
Call-in fee	No fee	❌
Basic subscription cost	$6 per month/ per user	Free
Free version available	✔	✔
Works cross-platform	✔	✔

Google Meet is perfect for business meetings

Google Meet Grid Layout

Source: Google

Meet is primarily designed for large-scale meetings, and you can easily set up meetings with up to 250 people on the platform. You also get all the features that are standard for a business-focused video conferencing solution: the ability to share screens, call-in from a phone, email integration, and collaboration tools.

Meet has everything you're looking for in a video conferencing platform.

Meet was limited to Google's G Suite customers, but the service is now available for free for everyone to use. Meet has email integration, so inviting participants is as easy as going through your contacts list and inviting colleagues to attend a meeting. If the invitees have a Google account, the meeting is automatically added to their Google Calendar. Participants can join over audio or video, and Meet also has easy call-in options. Google doesn't charge an extra fee for those calling in from their phones.

In addition to making Meet free for everyone, Google added a grid layout for video calls, just like Zoom. A grid layout makes it easier to see and interact with everyone on the call, and you can easily configure layout options. You can also set up your video and audio settings with ease, and if you're worried about bandwidth, there's an option to lower the video resolution for both incoming and outgoing video.

Google Meet Controls in Google Chrome

Source: Android Central

You can also easily record meetings, and the interface itself is easy to get acquainted with. There's a bottom bar with options to mute audio or toggle video, and options to turn on captions, and share your screen. You can delve into the settings for more customization options — including the ability to change the layout — but for the most part, Meet is as about as easy as things get for video conferencing solutions.

With encryption and robust collaboration tools, Meet is perfect for meetings and family gatherings.

The best part about Google Meet is security. There's no way for someone to join your meeting without your authorization, so it's not possible for someone to gate-crash a meeting. The meetings themselves are encrypted, and if you record a meeting, the corresponding file that's stored in Google Drive is also encrypted.

We rely on Meet for our weekly planning calls here at Android Central, and it has served us reliably over the years. All of us work remotely, and therefore we don't get a lot of chances to meet in person. We have team members scattered across the globe, and we use disparate operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS. That's where a service like Google Meet is invaluable.

Because Meet works natively in a browser, it's easy to connect to meetings regardless of the operating system we use. That's one of the best reasons to use Meet instead of a service like Zoom or WebEx, which requires you to download a plugin. I've dialed into weekly calls using my phone or relied on cellular data when I was traveling, and Meet worked just fine in both instances.

So, when can you start using Meet if you're not a G Suite user? Google is rolling out the service to everyone over the coming weeks, and Meet will be free with no limits on usage until September. After that, free users will be limited to 60 minutes for each meeting. That's still better than what you get with Zoom, and if you're looking for an alternative, Meet should be at the top of your list. Although Meet is designed for business use, it works great for family gatherings and hosting game nights. All you need is a Google account to initiate a Meet call.

Google Duo is the best mobile video calling service around

Google Duo logo

Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Android Central

Google Duo is meant for one-on-one communication. The service is designed for mobile use, and it uses the WebRTC standard to deliver excellent video quality without taking up too much bandwidth. One of the best things about Duo is the video fidelity — the service works great even on 2G cellular connections.

Google Duo isn't great for work meetings, but it is a great way to stay connected to friends and family.

As such, Duo just isn't suited to be a video conferencing platform. However, because it now facilitates group video calls with 12 participants, it is an excellent option for staying connected to friends and family. I've made dozens of calls over the last two months on Duo to talk to family members across the globe, and every call was thoroughly enjoyable. The one downside to using Duo for group calls is that there's no way to add a participant to an ongoing call. You need to end the call, make a new group that includes the new participant, and start a new call.

Duo's standout feature is augmented reality effects, and it goes a long way in making calls more entertaining. There's also the fact that you get rock-solid connectivity, with the service automatically switching from Wi-Fi to cellular data if it detects a Wi-Fi dead zone in your home. Duo is also the default calling service on Google Home and Nest Hub, so you'll get a notification on your smart speaker whenever there's an incoming Duo call, and you can take it directly on the speaker.

Another highlight with Duo is end-to-end encryption. Regardless of the platform you're using — Android, iOS, or the web interface — all audio and video calls made over Duo are end-to-end encrypted. If you're looking for a mobile video calling service, Duo still has a lot to offer.

It's an easy choice

With Meet now available for everyone for free, Google has two robust solutions for video calls. I have access to both services, so here's how I used Meet and Duo over the last two months. If I need to make a video call from my phone or a tablet, I use Duo. The service just works better for one-on-one communication, and with Google increasing the participant limit to 12, you can invite more friends and family members.

Having said that, Duo works best if your group video call consists of less than six people. The fact that there's no way to invite people to an ongoing call makes things that much more difficult. Meet is a better choice for larger gatherings, so if you're hosting a virtual game night or need a service that can handle large groups, you should switch to Meet.

Both services have a few things in common. Your data is encrypted, there's no way for anyone unauthorized to join your call, and you get rock-solid connectivity regardless of the platform you're using. It's great to see Google make Meet freely available to everyone because the feature-set on offer makes it one of the best video conferencing solutions around.

Best for meetings

Google Meet

The best platform for large meetings

Google Meet has a robust set of tools, making it the ideal platform for large-scale meetings. It lets you easily share the screen, prevents unauthorized users from joining a call, and it works with up to 250 participants. The free plan has a few limits, but even then it is better than Zoom and other alternatives.

Great for families

Google Duo

Catch up with your friends and family

Google Duo is still one of the best video calling services around. You get incredible video quality, there are several AR effects to make calls more fun, and the service works well even on low-bandwidth connections. The best part is that all your data is end-to-end encrypted.

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Is Zoom safe to use? Here's what you need to know - telegraphherald.com

Posted: 06 May 2020 10:30 PM PDT

Zoom, a videoconferencing service created for corporate webinars and meetings, has grown into something more amid the coronavirus outbreak.

With the number of daily users exploding from 10 million to 200 million from December to March, it has become a forum for nearly every kind of social function, including happy hours, yoga sessions, school classes, funeral services as well as other activities.

But no sooner had many tried Zoom for the first time than they began to hear reasons they might want to stay away.

Trolls have crashed meetings, flashing porn or racist slurs on screens. Security researchers released report after report on newly discovered vulnerabilities including leaked emails and bugs that might have allowed hackers to access webcams.

Google warned employees not to use Zoom's desktop application on their work computers "due to privacy and security vulnerabilities." SpaceX, the U.S. Senate and New York City's school district have enacted similar restrictions.

If you're among the tens of millions of people who have become regular Zoom users, you might be wondering what all this means for you. Here's a primer on some of the notable privacy and security lapses and how to keep your calls and data safe.

Is Zoom sending my data to Facebook?

A Vice investigation showed that Zoom's app for iPhones sent data about users' devices to Facebook, including about users who did not have Facebook accounts. The company was hit with at least two lawsuits in federal court, one by a California resident who alleges Zoom violated the state's new Consumer Privacy Act by disclosing information to Facebook without providing consumers with adequate notice or the ability to opt out.

Zoom Chief Executive Eric Yuan said in a blog post March 27 that the company removed code that sent user data to Facebook in an updated version of the iOS app. The company updated its privacy policy March 29 after a swell of concern from users.

"I think Zoom wasn't completely honest," Electronic Frontier Foundation senior technologist Bill Budington said. "I think they are going through a lot of growing pains."

How else might my information have been compromised?

Reports of Zoom's vulnerabilities predate the coronavirus crisis. Last July, security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh exposed a flaw that allowed hackers to take over Mac webcams through the app. The company fixed the problem after a public interest research center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Thousands of personal Zoom videos were left viewable on the open web, including one-on-one therapy sessions, telehealth calls and elementary school classes, the Washington Post reported. People's names, phone numbers and intimate conversations were revealed and children's faces and voices were exposed.

Experts say the company now seems to be making more serious efforts to identify and quickly patch vulnerabilities. It formed an advisory council of chief security officers from other companies and hired Alex Stamos, Facebook's former chief security officer, as an adviser.

"That's a lot of money being thrown at the problem to improve security. That is not insubstantial," said Leitschuh, who discovered the Mac camera vulnerability last year.

Are Zoom calls encrypted, and does that matter?

Zoom marketed its communications as protected by end-to-end encryption, which makes it, in effect, impossible for anyone, including the company itself, to spy on them. Recently, however, the Intercept revealed Zoom has been using a different type of encryption, called transport encryption, which enables the company to decode the content of calls.

That means the company could hypothetically be susceptible to pressure from government authorities to disclose communications, said Bill Marczak, a fellow at the Citizen Lab and a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley.

That doesn't make those calls uniquely vulnerable, however. Cellphone calls and Skype calls on default settings, for example, aren't encrypted end to end either, and it's unlikely the average person would need this type of security. But reporters or dissidents under oppressive regimes, government officials discussing classified information or big companies that want to keep their business strategies confidential might want to use a more secure platform, Budington said.

What is 'Zoombombing'?

Because Zoom is so easy to use, it also has been easy for people to exploit the app to sow mischief or chaos. "Zoombombing" is when uninvited participants interrupt or derail a meeting. Sometimes it's harmless trolling, but often it rises to the level of harassment.

As USC and local school districts transitioned to online meetings, they reported getting Zoombombed with racist taunts and pornographic images. Berkeley High School students were in the middle of a video conference when a man joined the Zoom meeting, exposed himself and shouted obscenities, the Mercury News reported.

The New York Times found scores of accounts on Instagram and on Reddit and 4Chan message boards where users coordinated to share meeting passwords and derail Zoom meetings.

Zoom's default setting allowed anyone to join video calls if they had the meeting ID, which is a number 9 to 11 digits long. These meeting IDs are easy to guess — with an automated tool (called "war-dialing"), one could access thousands of meetings within a day by simply making a lot of guesses.

What are some steps I can take to make Zoom safer to use?

Be careful about how you share meeting IDs. Don't post them publicly.

Generate a new ID for every meeting you launch using the options panel, instead of using your personal meeting ID. That way, if someone gets ahold of your personal ID, future meetings won't be disrupted by Zoombombers.

You can toggle settings to ensure meeting participants need a password to access the meeting, which will further protect from disruption.

Enable Zoom's "Waiting Room" feature, which lets meeting hosts keep would-be participants in a digital queue until they approve them to join the session. Zoom enabled the Waiting Room feature by default, requiring additional password settings for free users. Zoom has a guide to the feature on its website.

You can switch off a host of features that could be abused, if needed, including private chats, file transfers and custom backgrounds. The annotation feature, for example, could allow trolls to draw offensive shapes. You can toggle the "allow removed participants to rejoin" option. Zoom has a guide to host controls on its website.

Keep your desktop app up to date, so that any patches Zoom makes to security vulnerabilities are added to your device.

If you want to be extra careful, use Zoom only on a mobile device, such as an iPad or an Android phone, because these versions go through review in the app stores.

What information does Zoom give my boss or co-workers?

If you've been part of a long, boring webinar, you perhaps thought there would be no harm in checking your email or your Facebook feed to pass the time. So many were alarmed at the revelation of an "attention tracking" feature that allowed the meeting host to see when participants clicked away from the active Zoom window for more than 30 seconds. The company announced it had removed the feature in an April 2 blog post.

That's not the only way hosts can gather information on attendees. They also can record audio and video from meetings and save a record of group chats. Some Zoom users were surprised to learn that if they use a tool that allows them to save the chat log from a call on their local devices — which many use as a way to document meeting minutes — that record will include private chats they've sent in addition to messages the group has sent.

What are some alternative platforms?

Signal and WhatsApp communications are encrypted end to end. WhatsApp allows encrypted calls with as many as four people. This is a suitable option for highly sensitive conversations.

There are also other video chatting services, such as Skype, Google Hangouts, Webex from Cisco and FaceTime on Apple devices. Microsoft also offers powerful web, audio and video conferencing tools through its Microsoft Teams platform.

The bottom line

The reality is you can't see your friends, your classmates and maybe your co-workers right now. You can't eat at restaurants and you definitely can't go to bars. Zoom is one of the platforms people have ubiquitously adopted to replace these in-person interactions amid the coronavirus outbreak. And it works relatively well.

It's OK to use Zoom, experts say. Just be thoughtful about what you're using it for and observe a few precautions.

Suhauna Hussain writes for the Los Angeles Times.

Apple and Google update joint coronavirus tracing tech to improve user privacy and developer flexibility - TechCrunch

Posted: 24 Apr 2020 09:36 AM PDT

Apple and Google have provided a number of updates about the technical details of their joint contact tracing system, which they're now exclusively referring to as an "exposure notification" technology, since the companies say this is a better way to describe what they're offering. The system is just one part of a contact tracing system, they note, not the entire thing. Changes include modifications made to the API that the companies say provide stronger privacy protections for individual users, and changes to how the API works that they claim will enable health authorities building apps that make use of it to develop more effective software.

The additional measures being implemented to protect privacy include changing the cryptography mechanism for generating the keys used to trace potential contacts. They're no longer specifically bound to a 24-hour period, and they're now randomly generated instead of derived from a so-called "tracing key" that was permanently attached to a device. In theory, with the old system, an advanced enough attack with direct access to the device could potentially be used to figure out how individual rotating keys were generated from the tracing key, though that would be very, very difficult. Apple and Google clarified that it was included for the sake of efficiency originally, but they later realized they didn't actually need this to ensure the system worked as intended, so they eliminated it altogether.

The new method makes it even more difficult for a would-be bad actor to determine how the keys are derived, and then attempt to use that information to use them to track specific individuals. Apple and Google's goal is to ensure this system does not link contact tracing information to any individual's identity (except for the individual's own use) and this should help further ensure that's the case.

The companies will now also be encrypting any metadata associated with specific Bluetooth signals, including the strength of signal and other info. This metadata can theoretically be used in sophisticated reverse identification attempts, by comparing the metadata associated with a specific Bluetooth signal with known profiles of Bluetooth radio signal types as broken down by device and device generation. Taken alone, it's not much of a risk in terms of exposure, but this additional step means it's even harder to use that as one of a number of vectors for potential identification for malicious use.

It's worth noting that Google and Apple say this is intended as a fixed length service, and so it has a built-in way to disable the feature at a time to be determined by regional authorities, on a case-by-case basis.

Finally on the privacy front, any apps built using the API will now be provided exposure time in five-minute intervals, with a maximum total exposure time reported of 30 minutes. Rounding these to specific five-minute duration blocks and capping the overall limit across the board helps ensure this info, too, is harder to link to any specific individual when paired with other metadata.

On the developer and health authority side, Apple and Google will now be providing signal strength information in the form of Bluetooth radio power output data, which will provide a more accurate measure of distance between two devices in the case of contact, particularly when used with existing received signal strength info from the corresponding device that the API already provides access to.

Individual developers can also set their own parameters in terms of how strong a signal is and what duration will trigger an exposure event. This is better for public health authorities because it allows them to be specific about what level of contact actually defines a potential contact, as it varies depending on geography in terms of the official guidance from health agencies. Similarly, developers can now determine how many days have passed since an individual contact event, which might alter their guidance to a user (i.e. if it's already been 14 days, measures would be very different from if it's been two).

Apple and Google are also changing the encryption algorithm used to AES, from the HMAC system they were previously using. The reason for this switch is that the companies have found that by using AES encryption, which can be accelerated locally using on-board hardware in many mobile devices, the API will be more energy efficiency and have less of a performance impact on smartphones.

As we reported Thursday, Apple and Google also confirmed that they're aiming to distribute next week the beta seed version of the OS update that will support these devices. On Apple's side, the update will support any iOS hardware released over the course of the past four years running iOS 13. On the Android side, it would cover around 2 billion devices globally, Android said.

Coronavirus tracing: Platforms versus governments

One key outstanding question is what will happen in the case of governments that choose to use centralized protocols for COVID-19 contact tracing apps, with proximity data uploaded to a central server — rather than opting for a decentralized approach, which Apple and Google are supporting with an API.

In Europe, the two major EU economies, France and Germany, are both developing contact tracing apps based on centralized protocols — the latter planning deep links to labs to support digital notification of COVID-19 test results. The U.K. is also building a tracing app that will reportedly centralize data with the local health authority.

This week Bloomberg reported that the French government is pressuring Apple to remove technical restrictions on Bluetooth access in iOS, with the digital minister, Cedric O, saying in an interview Monday: "We're asking Apple to lift the technical hurdle to allow us to develop a sovereign European health solution that will be tied our health system."

While a German-led standardization push around COVID-19 contact tracing apps, called PEPP-PT — that's so far only given public backing to a centralized protocol, despite claiming it will support both approaches — said last week that it wants to see changes to be made to the Google-Apple API to accommodate centralized protocols.

Asked about this issue an Apple spokesman told us it's not commenting on the apps/plans of specific countries. But the spokesman pointed back to a position on Bluetooth it set out in an earlier statement with Google — in which the companies write that user privacy and security are "central" to their design.

Judging by the updates to Apple and Google's technical specifications and API framework, as detailed above, the answer to whether the tech giants will bow to government pressure to support state centralization of proximity social graph data looks to be a strong "no."

The latest tweaks look intended to reinforce individual privacy and further shrink the ability of outside entities to repurpose the system to track people and/or harvest a map of all their contacts.

The sharpening of the Apple and Google's nomenclature is also interesting in this regard — with the pair now talking about "exposure notification" rather than "contact tracing" as preferred terminology for the digital intervention. This shift of emphasis suggests they're keen to avoid any risk of their role being (mis)interpreted as supporting broader state surveillance of citizens' social graphs, under the guise of a coronavirus response.

Backers of decentralized protocols for COVID-19 contact tracing — such as DP-3T, a key influence for the Apple-Google joint effort that's being developed by a coalition of European academics — have warned consistently of the risk of surveillance creep if proximity data is pooled on a central server.

Apple and Google's change of terminology doesn't bode well for governments with ambitions to build what they're counter-branding as "sovereign" fixes — aka data grabs that do involve centralizing exposure data. Although whether this means we're headed for a big standoff between certain governments and Apple over iOS security restrictions — à la Apple vs the FBI — remains to be seen.

Earlier today, Apple and Google's EU privacy chiefs also took part in a panel discussion organized by a group of European parliamentarians, which specifically considered the question of centralized versus decentralized models for contact tracing.

Asked about supporting centralized models for contact tracing, the tech giants offered a dodge, rather than a clear "no."

"Our goal is to really provide an API to accelerate applications. We're not obliging anyone to use it as a solution. It's a component to help make it easier to build applications," said Google's Dave Burke, VP of Android engineering.

"When we build something we have to pick an architecture that works," he went on. "And it has to work globally, for all countries around the world. And when we did the analysis and looked at different approaches we were very heavily inspired by the DP-3T group and their approach — and that's what we have adopted as a solution. We think that gives the best privacy preserving aspects of the contacts tracing service. We think it's also quite rich in epidemiological data that we think can be derived from it. And we also think it's very flexible in what it could do. [The choice of approach is] really up to every member state — that's not the part that we're doing. We're just operating system providers and we're trying to provide a thin layer of an API that we think can help accelerate these apps but keep the phone in a secure, private mode of operation."

"That's really important for the expectations of users," Burke added. "They expect the devices to keep their data private and safe. And then they expect their devices to also work well."

DP-3T's Michael Veale was also on the panel — busting what he described as some of the "myths" about decentralized contacts tracing versus centralized approaches.

"The [decentralized] system is designed to provide data to epidemiologists to help them refine and improve the risk score — even daily," he said. "This is totally possible. We can do this using advanced methods. People can even choose to provide additional data if they want to epidemiologists — which is not really required for improving the risk score but might help."

"Some people think a decentralized model means you can't have a health authority do that first call [to a person exposed to a risk of infection]. That's not true. What we don't do is we don't tag phone numbers and identities like a centralized model can to the social network. Because that allows misuse," he added. "All we allow is that at the end of the day the health authority receives a list separate from the network of whose phone number they can call."

MEP Sophie in 't Veld, who organzied the online event, noted at the top of the discussion they had also invited PEPP-PT to join the call but said no one from the coalition had been able to attend the video conference.

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