On the first day of ICANN68, several sessions were subject to instances of disruption, or “Zoombombing.” This occurs when Internet trolls interrupt public Zoom meetings and use Zoom’s features to share offensive audio, images, and video.

The individuals responsible for these disruptions were removed from the sessions by the Meetings Technical Services team as quickly as possible. To reduce these types of interruptions in the short term, some participant features were disabled, including the ability for participants to unmute their own microphones and rename themselves on the participant list. In other instances, chat between participants was also disabled.

We do not take these incidents lightly and are working diligently to mitigate any future disruptions. All remaining ICANN68 sessions will be held using a password-protected Zoom Webinar format, with the exception of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), pending further evaluation by GAC leadership.

The event schedule, https://68.schedule.icann.org/, will be updated daily to reflect the changes to the Zoom participation links. All other services, such as remote simultaneous interpretation and real time transcription, are not impacted by this change.

Please note that if you have exported any session information to your calendar, the links will not update automatically. To update your calendar, you will need to export the new information as it becomes available.

The Participation Tools section of the event website has been updated with information on how to use Zoom Webinars. We encourage all participants who are unfamiliar with how to participate in Zoom Webinars to review this information.

We appreciate your understanding and will provide additional information as it becomes available.