zoombombing

Zoom is an app that facilitates online meetings, chats and group messaging. It was popular in the business and education world, but now that we are all living virtual lives, Zoom has become a popular app for any kind of virtual engagement with other people. The people who developed Zoom had never imagined it as having the popularity of Facebook and Messenger, for example, and so it had a low level of protection from trolling. But now it has been revealed as easy game for hackers who want to invade your chat session and shout obscenities.  This is particularly  true if you make your meeting public and do not require a password for entry. The bombing in this case is similar to that in photobombing where someone invades a photo as it is being taken and makes gestures designed to be annoying.

Zoom is becoming so popular that it is gaining a familiar use which is evident in the dropping of the capital Z.  Mostly zoombombing and zoombomber are spelled as one word with lower-case z.  And a zoom is emerging as the word for a meeting on Zoom, as in Will we have a family zoom this weekend? This is not quite enough to justify claiming a generic use (because zoom can only refer to the Zoom app) but it is creeping towards it.