Zoom Bombing

It's 2025 and suprise, suprise: Zoom Bombers are back! Fortunately, Zoom has quite evolved meanwhile, including excellent tools to counter Zoom bombers. It's quite easy to adequately be prepared and stop them - But only when you know what you are doing ;)

Let's call the person who is in charge of keeping Zoom bombers at bay, the TechHost.

General

• Zoom Role: You need to have the Zoom Host Role or Co-host Role
• Computer: Best to be host on a computer rather than on a mobile phone: The user interface on mobile devices are too limited to adequately respond
• Only one TechHost: You probably need just one TechHost: Multiple TechHosts might create more confusion rather than help, especially if they don't know what they are doing. And if they do know what they are doing, they likely realize that having just one TechHost, is plenty
• Practice: You need to regularly practice addressing Zoom Bombers, so that when it happens, you know immediately what to do without having to think. After Zoom Bombing reappeared at the beginning of 2025, I practice every time when I'm TechHost. I follow the practice script elsewhere in this article.

During Zoom meetings

• Monitor visitors: Monitor participants entering the meeting and be alert to any strangers. They might not be easy to spot, as they likely have normal names, just like legitimate participants - When not sure about this, enable the waiting room so you have better control over who is entering. E.q, by asking them questions to figure out if they are legitimite visitors
• Be alert to mayhem: Be alert to any developing mayhem - It's not always so clear what is happening, and a Zoom Bombing doesn't always start with a bang

When a Zoom Bombing happens

Suspend participant activities

Press Host tools » Suspend participant activities - That's all. This screenshots reflects the Host Tools menu, prior to suspending participant activities being activated

Suspend participant activities has been activated. All checkmarks are gone, and amongst others, video is disabled

Inform participants

Changes are, that at least some of the meeting participants, don't understand what just happened. Therefore, enable your microphone and inform them in a calm and non-alarming way.

Probably my default text for this:

This is your TechHost. Sorry for this interruption. We need to do some quick housekeeping, after which we will continue with the meeting.

Remove Bombers

Host Tools » Remove participant... - If you fail to do this, the problem will come back instantly

Resume participant activities

Reverse the various Suspend participant activities:

• You can't do this with just one click: You have to reset each setting separately under Host Tools
• Don't forget the items at the top of the menu, especially don't forget to disable Lock meeting, which will prevent folks to join the meeting
• You might want to keep the waiting room enabled, if you're worried that the Bombers might return.

Practice

1. Enable Suspent participant activities
2. Say something to the participants so they know that something has happened, and that the regular meeting will resume in a short moment
3. Remove Bombers (can't really do this while practicing)
4. Manually restore settings - Don't forget the items at the top of the Host tools menu.

Details

• Suspend participant activities only affects regular participants, not Hosts or Co-Hosts. E.g., Hosts can unmute themselve and start video
• The number of options in the Host Tools menu, depends on the Zoom subscription, and on what functionalities have been enabled or disabled in the Zoom Account. That's likely why you don't see Start video as an option in some of the images on this page: That has probably been disabled in the corresponding Zoom account.

See also

• Zoom