Jio officially launches JioMeet, cast doubt on the data-sharing policy

Jio takes on Zoom, Google Meet, Skype and a whole bunch of video conferring services with the official launch of JioMeet. Jio Platforms the holding company behind the telecom arm Reliance Jio has been testing the service for months with its own employees. In a nutshell, the service offers both one-to-one video calls and host virtual video meeting or conferences with up to 100 participants at a time.

There seems to be no restriction on the number of video calls you could make and there is no short time limit on a video call’s duration. You could actually continue the video conferencing uninterrupted for up to 24 hours long. Most calls will support HD Audio and high definition (720p) Video even at lower bandwidths.

JioMeet is highly interoperable, as you could join a meeting from any devices like Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux and also from any legacy conferencing devices you own. As it supports WebRTC, you could join a meeting right from your browser without downloading any application. The service allows seamlessly switch from one device to another right while on a video call. There is a ‘Safe Driving Mode’, for those busy always travelling business executives. A host can also enable a ‘Waiting Room’ to ensure no participant joins without permission.

The video conferencing service offers enterprise-grade host controls. You could password protect each meeting, supports multi-device login (up to five devices), share screen and collaborate.

The data-sharing policy

According to Jio, the JioMeet is advertised as India’s own most secure video conferencing solution. All meetings or calls are encrypted and can be password protected. But, the company is not telling whether these video calls are end-to-end encrypted.

When you closely check their terms and condition page and privacy page, there are many clauses that raise concerns and questions. In their privacy policy, it’s clearly stated that the service will collect both personal and non-personal information. The worst part, the company says it can share these details with their affiliates and external organizations or individuals. It also needs to be noted that any meeting recording in the service will be saved on Jio servers for 7 days.

• Personal information collected: name, age, gender, contact information, products and services you are interested in or require more information about.
• Non-personal information collected: unique system or hardware identifiers, system or application software, and peripherals
• Both are clubbed and shall be treated as personal information.
• Sharing:
  • Jio may disclose personal information to our affiliates when necessary to perform services on our behalf or on your behalf, to provide display advertising and promotional services, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links), processing credit card payments, providing customer service.
  • Share personal information with external organizations or individuals if we believe that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to (a)meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request; (b)detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues; (c)protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of our customers or the public, as required or permitted by law.

Dive-in to JioMeet

If you have ever used Zoom, then you would feel just like home which using JioMeet. The entire design, layout and flow path, uncannily like Zoom. Here is an entire Twitter thread exploring the similarities.

One could easily signup for a JioMeet account via either mobile number or email id. Then you could create an instant meeting or schedule a meeting and start inviting friends or colleagues. JioMeet is currently available to download on Android (Google Play Store), iOS/Mac (Apple Store), Windows, SIP/H.323 systems and any browser that supports WebRTC.