What is Skype's Meet Now?
Meet Now is a feature offered by Skype and the answer to Zoom's rise in popularity. It offers people the ability to quickly create meetings that do not require participants or even their hosts to have a Skype account. It's free and makes it a very tempting product to use to schedule meetings on an ad-hoc basis. However, that feature does come with a catch and it's to do with privacy and control over your data.
How does it work?
Whenever you set up a meeting through Skype's Meet Now, it creates a shareable link that looks something like this "https://join.skype.com/xxxxxxxxxxxx". In place of "x", it will give you an alpha numerical code, which is akin to a password to make it hard to guess and difficult for anyone to join your meeting, unless you shared the link with them. That is where we are facing the first issue.
No additional security through password or pin
There is no possibility of changing the shareable link, it is permanent. With no option of creating a PIN or password that would serve as an additional barrier, anyone can join your meeting, if they have the link to it. This is precisely one of the things that Zoom came under fire for, coining the term 'Zoombombing'. Zoom suffered from invitation links with short codes, making them very easy to guess. This caused unwanted guests to join people's meetings, hijacking them through trolling and insertion of unsavoury content or verbal attacks. Although there haven't been any reports of the same for Skype meetings, it could also be a possible for the same to happen.
Storage of your information
There are video and chat, which are both part of the meeting. It also allows you to record the meeting, which is a great feature. Skype say that "Your personal invitation links have no expiration date" and that they "hold your call recordings for up to 30 days and media shared in the chat even longer". It means that some of your information may stay on Skype's servers indefinitely!
Deletion (or the inability thereof)
Privacy nightmare
Skype (Microsoft) want to make it easy for people by removing as many barriers as possible and allow you to create, invite and join meetings without creating a new account. However, this comes at a great cost. With no actual option of deleting information, Skype's Meet Now is a complete privacy nightmare and we would never recommend using it for any sensitive information or meetings. You are not in control of your data and it requires contacting Skype (Microsoft) to request the deletion. This is bad and no service should ever store your data, without giving you an easy option of fully deleting it!
Our recommendation
If you are in need of video meeting and conferencing tools for your business and happen to use Skype's Meet Now, we recommend to stop as soon as possible. Just check some of your old meeting links from months ago to understand what we mean and look at the information that is possibly accessible to anyone on the Internet. Time to look at some alternatives that do come with the added security.
Zoho Meeting
We mainly use Zoho Meeting when there are only a few participants. They offer meeting PINs and participants can join without having to sign up for a separate account. The free plan allows up to 3 participants and a tiered system for 10 to 100 participants, starting at £2.00 /host per month.
Jitsi Meet
Not heard of Jitsi Meet, where have you been hiding? It's the best alternative to Zoom, offering encryption. It's open source and you don't need an account. It's our go-to for larger meetings and works on all platforms like web and mobile (applications available on the App and Play Store). Best of all, it's FREE and participants do not need to sign up.
Zoom
Zoom has probably become the most popular choice in recent years. Signing up for a free account allows for up to 100 participants but limits your meetings to 40 minutes (one-on-one meetings are unlimited). The cheapest paid plan will set you back £119.90/licence for the the year. It is a less affordable option compared to Zoho Meet and certainly to Jitsi Meet!