Online Classes:
Registration, Codes,
Booking Information 

(Why it is quite safe to make these ID's and passcodes public: brief explainer): The password to, say, your online bank account or email requires that the bank or email provider use the same "key" (i.e. your private password) twice over. The first time is to "encrypt" your password into an unreadable and unintelligible "hash" that they then store along with all the other information about you. When you then return wanting access to your own account or email, they present you with this unintelligible "hash". Since the bank or email provider's hash is an algorithm, it can go through a backwards process to produce your password, and compare it to what you just entered in the input submission box. If the two match, then you are given access. So simply speaking, it is a two step process of, firstly, using your password to encrypt into the hash; and then, secondly, using your password a second time to decrypt out of the hash. The system Zoom and other such sites use is somewhat different. When you register for a class, your private identifier (it's confusing to keep using 'password' everywhere), which Zoom has on file for your is "hashed" together with both (a) my public room identifier, and (b) the ID number of the specific class you have applied for. That combination of hashes is then sent to you in the confirmation email you receive. So although it has incorporated two pieces of publicly available information, there is the third part that is your own specific identifier. Zoom also quietly makes yet another pasascode for itself, which incorporates both the public meeting password and your identifier. When you then show up for class and present your confirmation code, Zoom's algorithms match everything up and ask (1) are you in the right place (my room identifier), (2) are you at the right time (meeting ID), (3) are you authorized to enter that meeting (this being the meeting passcode); and finally (4) are you who you say you are (this being your private identifier). If all those match, then your name shows in the "waiting room" that I can see as the host; and I can then click you in. So although it seems weird to make all that seemingly sensitive information publicly available, since it is only used for an encryption stage, and not for a decryption, then the information is useless to anyone who does not have some verifiable private key known to Zoom).

Copyright © Kofi Busia.