95/20 O                                                                                                          April 2, 2020

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Dear Brothers in the Sacred Priesthood,

I hope that my letter found you and your loved ones safe and sound amidst the current COVID-19 pandemic

Some of you probably know that there is a videoconferencing app called “Zoom” that is being very popular right now due to a lot of people having have to work from home as well as the kids having have to study from home, too. It’s recently been reported that the “Zoom” app has been having some data privacy and security problems that the company running the app (Zoom Video Communications) has been trying to fix. Apparently, New York’s Attorney General is currently looking into these issues. Because a lot of kids are using this app through their schools, some school districts forbid its school to use the program for the sake of the safety of the children. Hence, if your or your parish child/children have been using the “Zoom” app through the school that the child/children attend, I would like to strongly suggest to you to make sure that the child’s/children’s school administration is informed of these issues, so that the proper IT personnel of the school is aware of it (the same could be applied to the adults using the app). Perhaps the school is aware of it already, yet it would not hurt to inform them of this, just in case. Safety is very important in this day and age, especially when it comes to protecting our children. Please place a note in your parish bulletin about this issue. Thank you and let’s be safe!

Wishing you and your parishioners a spiritually fruitful Holy Week, I remain

Fraternally yours in Christ & Theotokos,

Lubomyr Zhybak

Safe Environment Coordinator

 

P.S. Here is a link to an article from The New York Times for more information about the issue:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/technology/new-york-attorney-general-zoom-privacy.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_NN_p_20200331&instance_id=17204&nl=morning-briefing&regi_id=121901786&section=topNews&segment_id=23382&te=1&user_id=afaa4113be8a677afa72c3a52bb87849