Zoom Android app data not showing and not blocked

Zoom video meeting app doesn’t show any data usage and still connects when blocked in the firewall. I did get the connection alert.

@Remah

You may have missed that when you first turn on the firewall it will give a notice that you may get “new” alerts with some apps when they are blocked, but this traffic is black-holed into your phone by our internal VPN.

May I ask your phone type? We have also found some phone types have broken VPN implementations and must be updated to solve it, but in your case if there is no significant data sent then it’s most likely just black-holed.

With all the security and privacy issues Zoom has, I hope you have the option to not use it.

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That is the other way around to the two issues I reported. You’re saying data blocked but showing. I’m saying data not blocked and bot showing:

  1. Glasswire shows no data usage for Zoom.

  2. Glasswire app block doesn’t stop Zoom connecting to meetings.

My phone is:
LG ThinQ G7
Model number: LM-G710EMW
Hardware version: Rev. 1.0

Android version: 9
Kernel version: 4.9.112

@Remah

Sorry, I should have read more carefully.

Do you see a key at the top of your screen when this is happening? Android should have a key icon if our local VPN is functioning. I see no key in your screenshot so perhaps our firewall was set to “Off”, or it was stopped by your phone somehow.

I should have said this is Glasswire 3.0.339r.

Firewall is still running:

@Remah

It probably does not apply to you but one of the most common issues we see is buggy VPN implementations with some phone types. Usually in this case I’d ask the person to see if they have any phone updates available and to be sure they have no VPN running simultaneously with ours. Android only allows you to use one VPN at a time unfortunately and we have to use an internal VPN as our firewall to block.

It’s also strange no key icon appears.

Is it only Zoom doing this or do you see this behavior with other apps?

I’ll report the issue to our team and we’ll try to recreate it.

Another thing that would help would be if you recreated the behavior, then went to the bottom right GlassWire menu and choose “send feedback”. We’ll then have some details and logs from your phone type to help us understand how this is possible.

Thanks for your detailed report and help.

Now when I check, both problems have gone away. I haven’t rebooted my phone so I’m not sure why it is corrected now.

Zoom stats now appear and app is blocked. It was a small amount of data, less than 10KB, so perhaps there was a small timing difference in the sample period between Android and GlassWire. But I’ve no idea about the firewall issue. Anyway, I can’t check either now but will check to see if either issue returns.

FYI, I know that there wasn’t a problem before this because when another user said GlassWire wasn’t recording data usage accurately I compared the Android per app usage. It was all near enough and all the apps I used were there. The only notable differences were that Android system activities were recorded differently under different process names and even aggregated:

Since then I installed Skype, Zoom, Whatsapp, and Messenger (replacing Messenger Lite) for video conferencing during COVID19 isolation. I just checked for data usage and all four appear correctly.

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I agree, anybody who uses Zoom is potentially opening up a real security threat for their data.

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Ways to fix-
Open the app drawer on your phone and locate the Zoom.
Long-press its icon, then tap App info (or the ‘i’ button)
Tap Storage (& Cache)
Click on Clear cache, then tap Clear data as well to reset the Zoom app.

Regards,
Rachel Gomez