When screen sharing, never share your whole screen. There is too much information that will be viewable on your desktop and infinite ways to accidentally leak private stuff. I can’t count the number of times someone screen sharing over Zoom accidentally had their personal chat messages showing or a browser tab with something embarrassing.
A few simple rules for safer screen sharing:
- Always select the option to share a specific window, never share your whole desktop (your desktop will show all of your open applications, new notifications, thumbnails of pictures, document names, and so on)
- If you are sharing your browser, open a new window (not a new tab!) and share only the new window (your tabs contain a lot of information that is unnecessary to expose)
- If you need to open a new link, open a new window and navigate to the link then copy the link to your sharing window (Google Chrome will autocomplete search history which may leak sensitive information)
See also:
- Keeping your screen sharing to the minimum of what you need preserves the right to be imperfect
- Self-presentation causes zoom fatigue