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by dillutedfixer 1408 days ago
I just had to (reluctantly) install Zoom on my freshly formatted MBP for some classes I'm in. The web client wasn't that reliable for me. Unless I'm totally missing something here, it let me install as non-root. The installer asked me if I wanted to install for all users or just for me. I chose just for me and it never asked for an admin password and installed to the Applications folder under my user and not the main Applications folder. There doesn't seem to be any daemons or background processes running when the application isn't open.

edit: meant this in response to some comments below about Zoom requiring admin access to install on macOS

1 comments

If yours is the primary account on the mac then, essentially, your account is “root”.
No it isn't, it's like any account that has sudo permission to become root.

It isn't root all the time, and is only root when provided with the proper password.

That’s why I said “essentially” the whole point of the attack is that the installer gets “root privileges” when the user enters their password to install. It’s kind of moot if they’re actually root when it’s got super user privileges.
I should have clarified. My account is a Standard non admin account. It never asked me for my password or an Admin password.