The new service, called Messenger Rooms, allows users to conference with up to 50 people at a time – similar to Zoom, Houseparty and other video conference services that have seen their businesses boom over the past few weeks.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg billed it as another way Facebook can keep people connected in a live-streamed announcement.

Video conferencing has become a necessity during the pandemic, as workers telecommute and families use video to stay in touch. It’s even become a destination for happy hours and dance parties.

Zoom, in particular, has benefited. The video conferencing company recently said the number of people participating in Zoom calls on a single day grew from 10 million at the end of December to more than 200 million people now. The free version of Zoom limits calls to 40 minutes until you sign up for a paid subscription, but can accommodate 1,000 people.

Facebook’s Messenger Rooms is in some ways more limited – it must be started from Facebook or Messenger, though others who join don’t need to have a Facebook account. And it’s limited to a total of 50 people.

But Facebook said Messenger Rooms will be free and won’t have a time limit. The new Facebook feature also allows people to drop in and join other rooms, or come and go as they please (though you can restrict who has access to your rooms) – much like the newly popular Houseparty app.

Facebook has a head start in the video streaming game with its built-in following of more than 2 billion users. But it has also been plagued by misinformation and privacy controversies, eroding people’s trust in the service.

Facebook says it will not “view or listen” to video calls.

WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook, will expand to allow eight people on each call, up from four now.

Facebook said 700 million people are chatting on daily video calls on Messenger and WhatsApp combined.

Daimler, Ericsson, NXP Semiconductors and Bank of America are among a wave of companies forbidding or warning employees against using Zoom because of concerns about its security, according to people familiar with their operations. They join corporations like Tesla and government agencies from Taiwan to Singapore that have banned the app’s use, though the city-state has since backtracked. India has deemed Zoom an unsafe platform and initiated a public contest to develop a secure homegrown video-chat alternative.

Zoom emerged during the global coronavirus lockdown as a home for everything from virtual cocktail hours to Cabinet meetings and classroom learning. It passed the milestone of 300 million daily meeting participants this week, having never crossed 10 million before the start of this year. Its share price remains close to a record high achieved in March. However, cybersecurity researchers warn hackers can exploit flaws in the software to eavesdrop on meetings. Weak protection has given rise to the phenomenon of “Zoombombing,” where uninvited trolls gain access to a video conference to harass participants.

Daimler wrote “the software has various security gaps and data protection problems” in a memo to employees reviewed by Bloomberg News. The automaker, employer to close to 300,000 people globally, wasn’t a Zoom corporate customer before but is now explicitly prohibiting the video-calling app, pointing workers to Microsoft Teams as a more trustworthy alternative.

“Daimler prohibits the use of Zoom for corporate content until further notice,” company spokesman Christoph Sedlmayr said in an emailed statement.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has focused on bolstering the security of his videoconferencing application with the goal of winning back customers who abandoned the company. Zoom is working on improving its encryption and argues that many of its problems stem from the fact the app was initially geared toward enterprise clients with their own IT security teams instead of the broad consumer app it’s become. Singapore’s government banned Zoom’s usage by schools but later lifted that moratorium after putting in place security safeguards.

NXP, a provider of wireless communications technology, uses Microsoft’s Teams internally and recently banned the use of Zoom with external parties, one person said, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters. Networking giant Ericsson also relies on Teams, previously Skype for Business, for remote meetings and now asks staff not to use Zoom. If clients or partners want to use the app, Ericsson staff will need to make sure the outside parties understand and are willing to accept the risks of using Zoom before proceeding with a meeting, said another person familiar with the measures.

An NXP spokesman declined to comment, while Ericsson said in an emailed statement it has internally approved apps and guidelines for meetings, without elaborating.

“A large number of global institutions ranging from the world’s largest financial services companies, to leading telecommunications providers, government agencies, universities and others have done exhaustive security reviews of our user, network and data center layers and confidently selected Zoom for complete deployment,” said a Zoom spokeswoman via email. “We are proud to be helping these customers maintain business continuity in this challenging and unprecedented time.”

Bank of America doesn’t typically use Zoom internally because it has other video conferencing tools, and in cases where clients seek to communicate via Zoom, bankers need to go through an approval process to use it, a person familiar with the situation said. Of the bank’s 208,000 employees, more than 175,000 are working from home, Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday.

A Bank of America spokesperson declined to comment.

The private university in California is reeling from lost revenue, increased costs and a market downturn, like all of higher education. Despite the grim fiscal landscape, Stanford last week pledged support for its workforce.

“With the reduction in on-campus activities, the need for work performed by many of these contract firms has been significantly reduced,” Stanford Provost Persis Drell wrote to the university community on April 14, adding that “we will support these contract firms in maintaining income and benefits through June 15 for their employees who normally provide services at Stanford.”

Student activists say Stanford has fallen short of that commitment. Instead of paying subcontracted staffers through the end of the semester, the university is only guaranteeing health benefits to janitors, according to United Service Workers West, which is part of the Service Employees International Union and represents the custodians and dining workers.

“This is a blatantly dishonest move,” said Ethan Chua, a senior and member of Stanford Students for Workers’ Rights. “I do not know for the life of me why a university with a $27 billion endowment can’t make this commitment.”

Stanford did not provide comment beyond the April 14 letter.

On Thursday, student organizers held a news conference that included laid-off workers, union representatives and alumni urging Stanford to step up for some of the most vulnerable members of the university community.

“All of us have an obligation to do what we can to help each other out. That includes big institutions, powerful institutions like Stanford University,” Julián Castro, an alumnus and former Democratic presidential candidate, said on a call with reporters Thursday. “There are a lot of people hurting out there right now. Stanford has an obligation to do its best with its … endowment.”

Organizers are calling on the senior class and alumni to withhold donations to the university until the administration agrees to extend pay through June 15 to nearly 200 subcontracted custodians and chefs who had been laid off since last month. They are also requesting hazard pay for contract workers who are still on campus and two weeks of additional paid sick leave.

Stanford has been at odds with student activists over the treatment of displaced service staffers since the university canceled in-person classes in March. Students collected 5,400 signatures on a petition imploring the school to pay the workers and raised $250,000 to provide emergency relief.

The university first said it could not afford to help. The provost and the president have taken 20 percent pay cuts and said the university anticipates a $200 million shortfall. But Stanford appeared to have a change of heart.

Chua said he was skeptical of the provost’s statement because it seemed ambiguous. He also found it odd that the university chose to inform students and faculty members of its decision, not the workers or their union.

Denise Solis of SEIU-USWW said the union never received any commitment from Stanford, despite repeatedly inquiring. UG-2, which employs the custodians, told the union about the health coverage. While Stanford is under no legal obligation to pay subcontracted workers, Solis argues the university has tremendous power and resources to help.

“They have the means to do what is right for those men and women on their campus,” Solis said on a call with reporters Thursday. “Rent is coming up the first of the month, and they will have already been a month without work. This is not just about those workers – it is their families.”

Alex Garcia, a custodian at Stanford who was laid off, expressed disappointment with the lack of communication from the university.

“We care about Stanford the way Stanford should care about us, not only as employees but as humans, too,” Garcia said on the call Thursday.

The university’s actions are emblematic of the financial crisis seizing all levels of higher education. They are especially notable because of the vast resources of Hopkins. The private research university in Baltimore counts among its benefactors the billionaire Mike Bloomberg, a Hopkins graduate, who gave his alma mater $1.8 billion in 2018 for student financial aid. It is believed to be the largest private donation in modern times in higher education.

But endowments come with restrictions and are meant for the long term. The short term for Hopkins and other schools from coast to coast looks brutal.

Rising expenses and plunging revenue are leading to a budget gap of more than $100 million for Hopkins for the final third of this fiscal year, university President Ronald Daniels wrote to the school community on Tuesday. The shortfall for the next fiscal year, starting in July, is projected to total $375 million.

“These tremendous financial pressures are not unique to Johns Hopkins,” Daniels wrote. “Many of our peers are grappling with similar challenges,” Daniels said he and the university provost will take 20 percent salary cuts starting in July and that other top officials will take 10 percent cuts.

Salary increases for faculty and staff will be put on hold, Daniels said, and “furloughs and layoffs are regrettably expected to be necessary within some units of the university.” In addition, the university will halt for one year its contributions to certain retirement accounts known as 403(b) and 457(f) plans. That step alone, which Daniels said “we take with great reluctance,” will save $100 million.

Hopkins has about 6,000 undergraduates and another 20,000 students in graduate and professional degree programs.

Higher education advocates have warned Congress that colleges and universities are bleeding money at an alarming rate. Last month they sought more than $50 billion for colleges and universities to alleviate the crisis, but lawmakers pared the request. Higher education will receive an estimated $14 billion in aid through the recently enacted $2 trillion coronavirus spending law. Education groups say much more will be needed as state budget deficits hit public colleges and private colleges contend with the threat of falling tuition revenue and numerous unforeseen expenses.

The four campuses in the University of Missouri System are bracing for budget reductions of up to 15 percent and considering layoffs, unpaid leaves and other cost containment. The state flagship at Columbia announced Monday 12.5 percent cuts across all departments in the coming fiscal year. All cabinet members will be taking 10 percent salary cuts that will last until at least the end of July.

University of Missouri System President Mun Choi has told senior leaders at the four campuses to prepare for similar pay cuts. The proposed cuts follow a decision by Gov. Michael Parson, a Republican, to withhold about $36.5 million from the Missouri system and $17 million from the state flagship school because of the economic impact of the pandemic. Choi warned this month that a projected revenue shortfall could reach $180 million.

The University of Kentucky is grappling with a shortfall of more than $70 million. Much of that is the result of sharp declines in investment income and tuition revenue, officials say. The state flagship has imposed 10 percent budget cuts across the campus, canceled raises, paused hiring, reduced retirement contributions and begun furloughing employees.

“Many of these decisions will cause pain. They will require shared sacrifice,” university President Eli Capilouto wrote to the Kentucky campus Tuesday. “But they are necessary if we are to meet our financial obligations, honor our principles of education, research, service and healthcare, and lay a foundation for the future.”

Adding to the fiscal pressure for all colleges, public and private, is a growing outcry among students and parents who argue that tuition and fees should be cut. Many say remote instruction this spring is not what they signed up for, and they fear fall instruction may be forced to continue online if campuses cannot reopen. Others say families suffering job losses, salary cuts and shrunken savings cannot be expected to pay normal rates.

Davidson College, a private liberal arts school in North Carolina, this week announced it will allow students to defer paying fall tuition bills for as long as a year. The public College of William & Mary announced Thursday it intends to reverse a previous decision to raise in-state tuition 3 percent for incoming undergraduates. That would mean a tuition freeze for all William & Mary students.

Even the wealthiest universities face extraordinary uncertainty, increased costs and lost revenue. Stanford University recently announced a $200 million budget shortfall. The university does not know yet whether there will be layoffs, the provost said in a virtual forum last week.

Yale University’s president, Peter Salovey, told the campus this week that the value of the school’s endowment has diminished amid financial market declines, and talked of shared sacrifice and planned budget cuts. This year the endowment supplied nearly a third of the university’s $4.3 billion budget, so the gap anticipated this year will affect nearly every school and program, Salovey said. Like many schools, Yale is freezing hiring and salaries, suspending travel and curbing other spending.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was hit with $50 million in unexpected costs this spring, including equipment for the shift to online learning, refunds of housing and dining charges to students and financial assistance to help students forced to leave campus. MIT’s president told the campus the school expects the pandemic to reduce many of the school’s major sources of income, including donations, research grants and payouts from the endowment.

Harvard University’s top three leaders cut their salaries by 25 percent this month, and other senior leaders are reducing their salaries or contributing to a fund to help support employees.

Some universities with the largest endowments announced this week they would not accept federal emergency relief through the recent federal spending bill and asked that the money allocated to them be given to colleges and universities in their states that face existential threats.

Urbana University, a branch campus of Franklin University in Ohio, announced this week that it will close in May at the end of the spring semester. The rural campus had struggled with low enrollment in recent years, according to a school announcement, but the pandemic added stress and uncertainty that made operations “impossible to sustain.”

The cybersecurity firm, ZecOps, began conducting research after finding suspicious lines of code on iPhones belonging to a client. Customers of ZecOps, a two-year-old cybersecurity firm with offices in San Francisco, instruct their employees to connect their iPhones to a computer or kiosk that uploads data logs to a central server, where they are analyzed for suspicious activity.

Zuk Avraham, ZecOps’s CEO and co-founder, said that the code stood out because it wasn’t found on many other iPhones. Avraham and others at the company investigated it for months, eventually discovering that it was connected to a previously unknown flaw Apple’s mail app. It alerted Apple, which is fixing the flaw, he said.

Apple spokesman Todd Wilder declined to comment.

The discovery of the flaw highlights a problem that has increasingly come to light in recent months. While Apple’s marketing claims that its iPhones are better secured than the competition, its mobile operating system called iOS is particularly vulnerable to sophisticated attacks like the one that befell Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last year. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

Like the attack suspected on Bezos’ phone, the hack that ZecOps says it discovered is referred to as a “zero click” attack. While less sophisticated attacks require the victim to click on a link, usually in a phishing email or text message, a zero click exploit requires no participation on the part of the victim. In this case, the perpetrators can send an email to the victim containing the malicious code. That code can then set off a chain reaction, called an “exploit chain” that knocks down all the phone’s defenses one-by-one, erasing its tracks along the way and making nearly impossible to detect.

Avraham declined to name the clients he believes were targeted, but said in a blog post Thursday they include a Fortune 500 company in North America, a journalist in Europe, an executive in Japan and others.

ZecOps still has no idea who might have been behind the attacks that it says affected it clients, but Avraham said in an interview that he believes the attack was likely carried out by a nation-state or some of deep-pocketed entity.

Apple makes it difficult for security researchers to find bugs in iPhones, which both whittles down the number of people capable of prying into the operating system and simultaneously increases the value of exploits, which are sold on the black market to the highest bidder. Those bidders include nation-states and third party security companies that help deep-pocketed entities hack into their enemies’ iPhones. Once an exploit is successful, Apple’s locked-down security makes it nearly impossible for victims to know they’ve been hacked.

The murkiness of iOS makes the job of companies like ZecOps extremely difficult. Even with the ability to scan the logs of its clients’ iPhones, the company is often only able to theorize whether there’s been an attack, with varying degrees of certainty. That’s what makes its most recent discovery so rare. It was able to essentially reverse-engineer suspicious activity and use it to discover an actual unknown security exploit.

While the hack raises questions about whether iPhone users should use the built-in mail app, removing it can create challenges for users. Even if an Apple customer deletes the Mail app, there is no way to change the default email application to a competing app, such as Microsoft’s Outlook. Deleting the app can lead to a loss of functionality. For instance, clicking on an email link will no longer work and users will be greeted by a message from Apple requesting that they re-download the Mail app.

Ryan Engstrom is not one of them.

The 39-year-old chiropractor in Denver is among the 7.2 million people who are ineligible for the congressionally mandated reprieve because their federal loans, originated through the defunct Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program, are held by private companies. The exclusion of these loans is frustrating borrowers and leading some to consider a risky alternative to get their payments paused through September.

Engstrom was laid off from his job last month and had to shutter his practice after Colorado closed nonessential businesses. There was no way Engstrom could afford to keep making $1,000 monthly payments on his student debt, so he quickly contacted his loan servicer to lower the bill.

Engstrom’s income-based repayment plan allowed him to lower his payments to under $150 a month, once he reported the earnings lost to the coronavirus crisis.

But with a family to care for, Engstrom felt every dollar of that payment could be put to better use. And for a fleeting moment, it seemed the federal government was offering that help.

“I just kind of assumed: Hey, I’m a federal student loan borrower. I’m in a federal plan. I should be good, right?” said Engstrom, who graduated in 2007 from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa.

When Engstrom learned the loans he and his wife had were ineligible for relief, he began researching his options and discovered he could consolidate. Borrowers with commercially held FFEL loans can consolidate their debt into the Direct Loan program – where loans are made and held directly by the feds – to take advantage of the interest waiver and payment suspension provided by the Cares Act.

But the more he learned about it, the more he grew concerned.

The $26,000 in uncapitalized interest on his loans would be added to the $185,000 balance, increasing the total amount he owed. Engstrom’s current repayment plan offered loan forgiveness after 25 years. Consolidating would also mean losing credit for nearly 12 years of payments he made toward that debt cancellation. And he’d end up with a slightly higher interest rate.

“This is certainly not the easy solution the Education Department has made it out to be,” said Tariq Habash, head of investigations at the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group. “Consolidation is supposed to take 30 days, but for a lot of borrowers, it will often take months. There’s a lot of reasons to be very cautious.”

Still, Engstrom is intrigued by the prospect of being eligible for a more generous repayment plan.

If Engstrom had a consolidated Direct Loan, he could enroll in Revised Pay as You Earn, or REPAYE. That program caps payments to about 10 percent of discretionary income and cancels any remaining debt after 20 years. He could save money on his monthly bill, but Engstrom would be approaching 60 before even a dime of his debt would be canceled.

“The great hope is that as my practice gets going and I’m able to build it up, I can pay my loans off. The goal is not to have those forgiven,” Engstrom said. “We’d have to pay taxes on the entire forgiven amount. The only thing is, [with a new plan] I’d be kicking the can down the road as interest accrues.”

Until recently, Engstrom had no idea his loans were held by a private company. There is no indication when he pulls up his account through his loan servicer’s website. And he never had a reason to ask.

The federal government actually owns some loans from the FFEL program, and that debt is eligible for payment relief. So why are those borrowers so lucky? It’s a bit of a fluke that’s rooted in the design of the old program.

For years, the federal government was essentially a silent partner in a $60 billion program. Private lenders used their own money to finance the loans, but behind the scenes, the government paid a portion of the interest to make the debt more affordable. And to entice lenders, the government guaranteed the debt, taking on the risk of default. But after lenders were caught stealing from the government and paying off financial aid officers, the FFEL program lost favor on Capitol Hill.

The 2008 recession threatened the liquidity of private lenders, though, so the Education Department swooped in to buy some of their FFEL loans to keep the program going. By the time the Obama administration moved solely to direct lending in 2010, the portfolio of bank-based loans had been divided up among the department and companies like Navient and Nelnet.

This week, a group of 25 consumer advocates and lending associations urged congressional leaders to extend the six-month payment pause to all FFEL loans and federal Perkins loans for low-income students that are held by colleges and universities.

“These loans have essentially the same terms and conditions as the loans that are owned by the federal government,” the group wrote. “It is imperative that Congress take swift action to ensure equitable treatment for all borrowers and include legislative language in the next emergency bill to directly provide interest subsidies and other benefits to borrowers with FFELP and Perkins loans.”

In the meantime, Engstrom continues to wrestle with what to do with his loans in the future. His unemployment benefits just kicked in, his wife is still working and they have squirreled away some money. If this stretch of unemployment lasts much longer, Engstrom could temporarily postpone his payments through forbearance, but interest would accrue and his balance would grow.

Taking advantage of the Cares Act payment pause has become less of a motivator for consolidation. Engstrom now worries that if Democrats are successful in bringing about student-debt cancellation, once again his loans would be excluded.

“I don’t want to be left out again,” Engstrom said.

The closure of restaurants and hotels, the main buyers of fish and seafood, together with the difficulties of maintaining social distancing among crews at sea have caused hundreds of fishing vessels to be tied up at ports around the world. Marine scientist have already started investigating the effects this will have on marine life.

“Studies after the first and second world wars showed a spectacular recovery,” said Carlos Duarte, a research chair at the Red Sea Research Center in Saudi Arabia. “We are hoping that this unintended closed season between February and June or July will accelerate the recovery of fish stocks and allow us to reach conservation objectives faster.”

The covid-19 outbreak has decimated the restaurant trade and wreaked havoc with food supply chains. Demand and prices have collapsed in Asia, home to some of the world’s largest seafood and fish markets. In Spain, which has the largest fleet in the European Union, half of the ships are staying at port.

The EU enacted emergency measures last month to allow member states to give financial aid to help the fishing and aquaculture industries through what it called a “dramatic slump” in demand for seafood. The downtown adds to uncertainty for EU members such as Spain and France over future access to U.K. waters as a result of Brexit.

The marine environment can only benefit from the reduced pressure on stocks, however. While evidence of a recovery in marine life is still anecdotal, increases in the presence of mammals such as killer whales, dolphins and seals have been recorded in areas where they hadn’t been seen in decades, said Duarte, who is part of a consortium of scientists in the U.K., Canada, Spain and Saudi Arabia compiling data.

“The noise and the activity on the water have diminished,” Duarte said. “These animals have a culture that is passed through generations and the young ones are probably feeling curious about areas that were part of their territory decades ago.”

Signs that marine life is recovering include reports of turtles nesting in now-abandoned beaches in Brazil, he said. The same phenomenon could happen in the Mediterranean coast later this year when breeding season arrives. As well as the Mediterranean, the lockdowns are likely to help marine species in the Atlantic, which breed between April and June. The impact will be seen within one or two years, though it will probably be less dramatic than the recovery after the world wars, which halted fishing for three to five years depending on the region, Duarte said.

In Spain, where fishermen are allowed to work during the lockdown because they’re considered essential workers, the sector is struggling, said Javier Garat, secretary general of industry group Cepesca. Small boats going back to port at the end of each day are now selling what they catch at “reasonable” prices in local markets after prices initially halved, he said.

The seafood sector in the country’s north is completely halted, while Spanish trawlermen involved in fisheries off western Africa are freezing everything they catch as they wait for restaurants to reopen and demand to pick up.

Long distance fishermen catching cod, shark or swordfish in the northern Atlantic or the Indian ocean face great uncertainties. They work on shifts of up to four months, some of which have been extended, but the solution is not permanent.

“These crews are unloading the fish without stepping on the docks – right now they’re probably one of the safest places in the world,” Garat said. “But this can’t go on forever, eventually they’ll have to rest and flying replacement crews to places as far as Seychelles is almost impossible right now.”

To be sure, the recovery of diversity and fish numbers is a slow process and the experience in marine protected areas shows a full recovery can take as much as two decades, said Nick Graham, a professor at Lancaster University in the U.K. and co-author of a study analyzing fish populations in over 1,800 tropical coral reefs in 41 countries.

The study, led by Professor Joshua Cinner at the James Cook University in Australia, classified the reefs according to their fish stocks, the biodiversity and the state of the ecosystem. Only 5% of reefs analyzed were in the top “A” category, all of them in remote locations with little human pressure, showing the importance of marine reserves and fishing restrictions to help reefs in lower categories recover.

“The most direct impact on fish is fishing,” said Graham. “Where there’s more people it tends to be more fishing pressure to meet the demands of larger human population, and if a reef is less fished then more fish will survive.”

Deputy Health Minister Satit Pitutecha showed off the app to reporters on Thursday (March 26).

He said anyone can get the app. It will record their travels and, if they become infected, it will help officials alert district officials to take care of them, people in close contact and people in the area suspected of having contagion.

Satit said there’s also the “Covid19 DDC Moph” app and the website http://covid19.ddc.moph.go.th.

Also running in English, they report confirmed cases categorised by province with brief details on each case.

He also recommended the Sabaideebot chatbot on Line, where people talk about the virus in Thai and can register their health records. Should they become infected, that information is passed on to their district health office.

Sabaideebot too has updated information on the daily Covid-19 situation.

If users want to watch the video in high quality, they have to manually select it. The measure will apply for one month, starting March 24.

Video streaming requires internet bandwidth – unlike listening to music, sending messages or using maps, because the file size is larger. Last year, Google led in internet usage worldwide, according to Sandvine, a network analysis company.

Meanwhile, two video-streaming platforms, Amazon Prime and Netflix, are cutting bit rates in Europe with Netflix claiming it could reduce data usage in Europe by 25 per cent.