Published 19:18 IST, February 24th 2021
8-year-old bunks online classes for days by scamming her teachers, parents and Zoom app
A Twitter user named Mike Piccolo shared a Twitter thread where he described how his niece came up with innovative ways of skipping classes.
Ever since the pandemic has hit the entire globe, everything has shifted online. Students now attend online classes and amid the online class scenario, they have come up with innovative ways to bunks lectures. A Twitter user named Mike Piccolo shared a Twitter thread where he described how his niece came up with innovative ways of skipping classes. The young girl found a trick to fool her parents, teachers and even the zoom app.
The mystery continues
On day 1, the young girl told her that the app is not working. The mother thought that it was some glitch and she informed the teacher. Another day, the same glitch happened and she had to miss classes again. The Zoom app would say ‘incorrect password’ every time the girl tried to join her class. To come up with a solution, the teacher created a new classroom and the students created new calendars and logins. However, the problem persisted. Mike wrote, “My sister now takes my niece to her friends house to see if it is something with her internet or IP. Same story. It works but then kicks her off and can’t log back in. This has to be some crazy bug in Zoom. “Maybe her account is flagged?”, my sister (The Mark) exclaims”.
Tired of the problem, the mother decided to call the computer teacher and even she could not resolve the issue. The mother decided that her daughter should be homeschooled. Her plan was revealed when one day the girl was at a friend’s house to attend the class and the friend’s mother noticed she was logging out constantly. It was only then when they realised that the young girl repeatedly typed in the wrong password to her account about 20 times. She had figured out that when you log in with an incorrect password, Zoom will lock your account for a set amount of time.
Mike wrote, “The more times you do this, the longer the wait period for you to get back into Zoom. She also noticed that the error that is presented to a user when they are locked is “Incorrect password” and not “your account has been locked”. He added, “Is it bad that when I heard the story I felt proud more than anything? As someone in the IT industry, let's pray she goes white-hat or we might all be in trouble”.
Netizens react
Amused by the story, netizens took over the comment section. One Twitter user wrote, "Went by my 8 Granddaughter dutifully doing her online math...only to notice she had her phone in her lap and was playing games...the kids have figure out that the app measures time in the app...not time working! They aren’t stupid!". Another person wrote, "Funny! Kinda odd that Zoom tech didn't see a log of incorrect password attempts in a row, or simply reset it to a generic one. But maybe they don't do that or see that".
(Image Credits: Twitter/@mfpiccolo)
Updated 19:16 IST, February 24th 2021