By Reuters
Zoom Video Communications will shift to a partner-only model in mainland
China from
Aug. 23, suspending direct sales to all customers in the
region, the company said on Monday.
Zoom customers in China received an email on Monday informing them of
the change, and telling them it would provide users with “better local
support.”
In the email, seen by Reuters, Zoom listed Bizconf Communications,
Suiri Zhumu Video Conference, and Systec Umeet - as partners that can
offer its commercial service to customers in China.
Zoom has been distancing itself from its China operations, which had
come under the scrutiny of human rights activists and privacy advocates.
The company announced in May that it would suspend new free user
registrations in China and limit new user registrations to enterprise
customers who sign up through authorized sales representatives.
But in June, Zoom came under fire when it was revealed it had shut an
account belonging to a group of U.S.-based Chinese activists who were
attending an online video group chat to memorialize the Tiananmen Square
massacre.
In a blog post, Zoom confirmed it had temporarily shut down the accounts
due to request from China’s government. It said that it had re-instated
the terminated accounts and “will have a new process for handling
similar situations.”
Months earlier, security researchers discovered that Zoom re-routed
some calls through its servers in China, even if those calls were placed
outside China.
The company said that the re-routing took place in “extremely lmited
circumstances” and that it took its mainland China data centers off of
an approved list of backups for users outside of China.
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