Settings for Preventing Zoom-Bombing

Settings to Prevent Zoom-Bombing

Table of Contents

What is Zoom-bombing?

Zoom-bombing is when uninvited individuals “gate-crash” Zoom meetings and disrupt the session—often by sharing disturbing or inappropriate content. These incidents are most commonly linked to publicly available meeting links, but may also occur depending on meeting settings.

Reminders on using Zoom to host public events

If you share your meeting link on social media or another public location, anyone with the link may attempt to join. Use the following tips to help secure public-facing meetings and events:

• Avoid using your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to host public events.
  • Your PMI is essentially one continuous meeting, and participants can attempt to join at any time.
  • Learn about meeting IDs and how to generate a random meeting ID (0:27 mark) in this video tutorial.
• Familiarize yourself with Zoom’s settings and features.
  • Understand how to protect your virtual space when you need to.
  • For example, the Waiting Room feature can help hosts control who joins and when.

Read on for Zoom settings that can help you share a meeting link safely—without unwanted interruptions.

Manage screen sharing

The first rule of Zoom: don’t give up control of your screen.

For public meetings, you do not want random participants taking over screen sharing. You can restrict this before and during the meeting so that only the host can share.

To prevent participants from screen sharing during a call: in the host controls, click the arrow next to Share Screen, then select Advanced Sharing Options.

Under Who can share? choose Only Host, then close the window.

You can also lock screen sharing by default for all meetings in your Zoom web settings.

Manage your participants

The features below can help you secure your meeting and host with confidence:

• Allow only signed-in users to join : If someone attempts to join and isn’t signed into Zoom using the invited email address, they will be blocked and see a notice.

This is useful if you want to control attendance (for example, limiting participation to SFA students, faculty, staff, or invited guests).

• Lock the meeting: Once all expected participants have joined, lock the meeting to prevent new participants from joining (even if they have the meeting ID and password).
• Require a meeting password: Share the Meeting ID publicly if needed, but distribute the password through a controlled channel (for example, direct message or email).
• Remove disruptive participants: Use the Participants panel to remove unwanted attendees.
• Allow removed participants to rejoin: By default, removed participants cannot rejoin, but you can enable rejoin if needed (for example, if someone is removed by mistake).
• Put participants on hold: Temporarily pause a participant’s audio/video connection and return them when appropriate.
• Disable participant video: Hosts can stop a participant’s video to reduce distractions or inappropriate behavior.
• Mute participants / mute upon entry: Reduce noise and disruptions, especially in large meetings.
• Turn off file transfer: Prevent unsolicited files from being shared via meeting chat.
• Turn off annotation: Prevent participants from drawing or writing on shared content.
• Disable private chat: Reduce distractions and prevent unwanted participant-to-participant messages during the meeting.

Use a Waiting Room

One of the best ways to run public events safely is to enable the Waiting Room feature. The Waiting Room is a virtual staging area that prevents participants from joining until the host admits them.

Hosts can customize Waiting Room settings and even personalize the message shown while attendees wait. This message is a good place to post meeting rules or guidelines.

The Waiting Room is an effective way to screen who is attempting to join and prevent disruptions.

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