Report: Education Ministry to test local analogue of Zoom, Skype

MOSCOW, May 6 (PRIME) – Russia will test a local analogue of foreign video conferencing platforms Zoom and Skype, Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov said on Tuesday during a program Dialogue broadcast on TV channel Rossiya 24.

“We want to make a system and are testing an analogue of Zoom or Skype, but local, to make a really private system without personal data leak, which is important,” Kravtsov said.

Personal data safety is not only the matter of information security, but it is also physiological, he said.

Deputy Yevgeny Lifshits, a member of the information policy committee at the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, said the local video conferencing platform could be launched shortly if it is created on the base of the existing programs from the register of Russian software.

“More likely, one of the programs from the register of Russian software is being adapted in haste,” the expert said.

Zoom’s popularity has rocketed thanks to the lockdown provoked by the coronavirus pandemic, and the application is now used by more than 300 million people. However, the users complain about Zoom’s sharing data with Facebook, among other problems.

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