Men are lying their way into private Zoom meetings to expose themselves and masturbate on camera

• After "Zoombombing" became an early-pandemic issue, groups locked down meetings with passwords.
• Now, sexual harassers are lying their way into Zooms for everything from AA to writers' groups.

When the world shifted online at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, millions of Americans were introduced to Zoom — and to "Zoombombing." Uninvited internet trolls slid into all kinds of public Zoom events, taking over the screen-share function and subjecting users to porn and racial slurs.

Zoom fought back, encouraging users to take their group meetings private and adding obstacles like authentication for users to join, passcodes for access, and a waiting room. (In August, the company settled for $85 million in a class-action suit that claimed it didn't do enough to prevent Zoombombing. As part of the settlement, Zoom agreed to further increase security measures.)

But across the country, users say a new group of Zoombombers has emerged: men who lie or steal others' authentication codes to enter a private room, with the intention of masturbating and exposing themselves to groups of strangers.

I know because it happened to me. During a December session I hosted for A Very Important Meeting, an online meditation and mindfulness space for writers, a man posing as a writer turned on his video 30 minutes into the event, pointed his camera at his naked groin and began to masturbate. Flustered, I struggled to kick him out as quickly as I could, but the damage was done.

AVIM responded by immediately changing its protocols for access and sign in, and cofounder April Dávila told me that it would remove any member who didn't adhere to its agreements for interactions.

Yet AVIM — and any other organization that relies on Zoom — can't always ascertain the intentions of someone who purports to be a member of a group but has sexual harassment in mind. Nor can they prevent a hacker who steals others' log-in credentials to pursue gratification.

"There are measures that we can put in place to try to increase our safety, but there is no complete safety that you can assure," David Ley, a clinical psychologist and sexual-health expert, said.

One man stole students' log-in credentials to sexually harass a professor in class

S. is a guest lecturer in a graduate program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In April, she was in the midst of teaching a Zoom class when a man turned on his camera, exposing his penis. He began moaning and using explicit language, touching himself while repeating S.'s name over and over again.

Caught off guard, S. moved as quickly as she could to remove the man from the room, only to have him return minutes later. She ultimately had to shut down the entire lecture. (S. requested anonymity out of concern over further harassment. A student in her class confirmed the incident had taken place.)

As it turned out, the man had used stolen credentials from two different female students to gain access to the class. When S. used Zoom's security icon to remove him, he simply returned with another stolen log-in.

"Because his face was never on camera, there's very little they can do," S. said. Both students said they had not shared their credentials with anyone else, and did not recognize the man. S. didn't either.

S. reported the incident to the university's dean, who sent an apology letter to students, referring them to the free counseling services offered on campus. But it was S. who ultimately had to deal with the fallout.

Student emails about the incident filled S.'s inbox. "What happened was so upsetting; I am afraid it will happen in all my classes now," one student wrote. "I cannot learn this way and would like you to excuse me from attending any other classes on Zoom," wrote another. Ultimately, three students dropped the class.

"It was very traumatizing," said S., who said she still agonizes that she could have somehow prevented the incident or handled it in a better way.

"I think it's a topic that people don't want to discuss," she said. "Even when I had to speak with people at the university who were doing the investigation, everybody was just uncomfortable."

Harassers have pretended to be in AA to Zoombomb password-protected meetings

Dawn, who lives in New York City, is a recovering alcoholic who has regularly attended AA meetings for years. "When I go to meetings, I'm going to church," she said. "That's my place of community and my place of spirituality. That's my safe place."

When AA meetings transitioned online during the pandemic, Dawn's safe place was interrupted. Her sobriety community endured repeated Zoombombings by men posing as fellow attendees, who would wait until the meeting was underway and then begin masturbating on camera.

Dawn's AA community cracked down hard, instituting password protection, an email procedure for requesting access, and selecting two "spiritual bouncers" from the group for every meeting to eject anyone who managed to get the password but had intentions beyond discussing sobriety.

But the nature of AA, which is intended to welcome strangers into the community, makes it hard to prevent every incident. Twenty minutes into a recent password-protected meeting, Dawn's friend Nina was about to speak when a man turned on his video to expose himself fully nude and masturbating — including his face. (Dawn and Nina requested their last names be withheld to maintain their AA anonymity.)

"I was so taken aback I let out a scream," said Nina. "Thankfully, I was muted."

No one in the meeting recognized the perpetrator, and in the rush of hosts and bouncers scrambling for the button to kick the man out, no one was able to take a screenshot or report the incident in real time.

Nina said Zoom's security measures "were not user-friendly, and still aren't." Last month, she was in another AA meeting that got Zoombombed.

"This is a really messed-up thing to do when there are people trying to quit drinking and want to show up to a meeting," Dawn said.

Why do men go to such lengths to publicly masturbate?

Zoombombing a random public meeting isn't hard. But lying one's way into a private space — or stealing someone else's log-in credentials — is tougher. Why are men going out of their way to harass people in these digital spaces?

Ley believes that the lack of consent is a core component of the appeal. "The shock reaction from the viewers is a big part of the excitement" for the perpetrators, he said.

Couples counselor and sex therapist Jen Meyer agrees. "There are exceptions, but ultimately, it is the violation of consent itself and the resulting shock value that may be the draw," she said.

That desire to shock can even extend to men seeking mental-health treatment. During a January telehealth consultation with a new patient, Crystal Frederick, a licensed professional counselor in Texas, said he began telling her "these outlandish stories with incredibly vulgar language. And then, under the guise of getting a pen, he stood up and had nothing on from the waist down."

Frederick immediately ended the call and reported it to her supervisors, though not to the police. She said the incident was traumatizing, but she felt guilty because her experience wasn't as bad as a "real" sexual assault. When someone is assaulted online, she said, "we don't feel like it was that bad, because we're just expected to put up with it."

She said she's speaking out because she wants people to know the trauma of a Zoombombing is very real. "What we have to know is that these actions are sexual assaults. They are nonconsensual acts. And that is the definition of abuse. None of this is OK."

What to do if you've been Zoombombed

Matt Nagel, security and privacy PR lead for Zoom, acknowledged these incidents are deeply disturbing. "This behavior has no place on our platform, and we strongly condemn it," he said.

Nagel encouraged people who've been Zoombombed to use the platform's "Report a User" function, which allows the company to investigate users and suspend them from Zoom if warranted. (According to the company's statistics, 7.6% of resolved reports have resulted in user suspension.) Anyone who believes their account has been hacked or stolen can report it directly to Zoom's safety team.

Even in cases where the perpetrator is unknown, reporting sexual harassment to state and federal authorities can help them track these assaults. The U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of Michigan released a statement recommending victims report harassment to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaints Center.

"I encourage folks to report this," Ley told Insider. "This isn't something to keep secret. You didn't do anything wrong here — this was criminal behavior. You shouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed."

'This is the world we live in'

While Zoom and other video-chat platforms say they'll continue to provide tools to fight harassment, the growing consensus is that these behaviors will continue, especially as an era of increased remote work makes online meeting spaces a part of life.

"This is the world we live in," Meyer said. "We have to figure out how to navigate all of these systems like it's a part of the landscape now. We have to do a better job of teaching — it's sort of like media literacy."

In addition to taking all protective measures, Meyer suggested that organizations add information on consent into any materials they share with group participants, along with the repercussions for violations.

But she acknowledged that such measures "would likely only stop those who started with good intentions to begin with, and wouldn't do much to solve the real problem — that there is a new space where predators can act without repercussions." She envisions a day when video-chat platforms can automatically recognize and blur obscene images.

In the meantime, both therapists agreed that anyone who's been Zoombombed shouldn't feel shame about seeking support.

"We can't make the online environment completely safe, because the world's not safe," Ley added. "But what we can do is increase the degree to which people can seek help and support after encounters. This is happening with lots of people. And the more we can draw attention to that, the less people will feel like they did something wrong."