Zoom gets dunked on some more because of multiple reported security and privacy issues, Softbank says no to a $3B deal with WeWork, and the Sprint/T-Mobile merger is official.
Zoom is getting a lot of attention right now, but not all of it is positive. Since at least mid-March, Twitter users have reported that, despite registering with Zoom using their personal email addresses, Zoom grouped them with thousands of others as if they all worked for the same company, thereby exposing their personal information. And it wasn’t that long ago when we discovered that Zoom didn’t use end-to-end encryption on video meetings, despite boasting about encryption in its marketing materials. Zoom’s leadership has since come out to acknowledge the security gaps and apologize, but social media is still pretty upset about the deception.
SoftBank will no longer go ahead with its $3 billion tender offer for WeWork shares. The deal was part of a larger rescue plan for the hobbled office-space company as SoftBank committed $5.45 billion to WeWork since last fall. The company says conditions agreed in October were unmet. Former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann is set to lose on a payout close to a billion dollars. Naturally, the coronavirus is expected to hit the office-sharing company’s business eliminating the need for short-term office space.
And lastly, there’s still a lot of chatter about the T-Mobile and Sprint merger which became official this week. T-Mobile now owns Sprint after a nearly two-year battle and a number of legal hurdles. The merger turns the third and fourth-largest wireless carriers in the U.S. into one significant competitor to Verizon and AT&T. The merger is worth over $31 billion.
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