A San Francisco church filed a class action lawsuit against Zoom Video Communications on Wednesday after a virtual Bible class was allegedly hacked and class participants were forced to watch pornographic videos.

The company has been the subject of several lawsuits since Americans have increasingly used virtual meeting technology to conduct business, recreational and religious activities during the novel coronavirus pandemic. In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday by Saint Paulus Lutheran Church and one of its administrators, Zoom was accused of “total failure to provide security” after one of the company’s Bible study classes was hacked. church on May 6.

“Zoom prioritizes profits and revenue over data protection and user safety, while millions of users in the United States have registered with Zoom based on its fake advertisements and count on Zoom’s platform to conduct business during this pandemic,” the lawsuit said.

According to the lawsuit, members of the Bible study class were logged into a password-protected virtual meeting space when another individual allegedly hacked into the gathering and began streaming pornographic videos. The lawsuit alleged that the study group was unable to turn off the videos and decided to end their course early after it was hacked a second time minutes later.

After alerting Zoom to the incident, the church administrator received a response from the company identifying the hacker as “a known serial offender” who had been “repeatedly reported to authorities”, according to the lawsuit. . When further action was not taken by the company to remedy the incident, the church notified local and federal law enforcement agencies of the hack, according to the lawsuit.

Although the lawsuit said the nine-person Bible study class was mostly made up of elderly people, it cited other instances in which children were targeted by Zoom hackers, including a college class in California and a meeting of high school students and families in Kentucky. Reports of incidents like these have led the FBI to warn Americans who have turned to virtual meeting spaces during the pandemic of the possibility of hackers breaking into meetings.

In a press release in late March, the FBI said it had received “several reports” of hacking incidents and Zoom identified specifically as a platform on which “zoom-bombing” could occur.

Citing a Zoom security document, the lawsuit said the company failed to protect those using its platform despite password protections and other assurances that meeting hosts would have control over who accesses virtual meeting space. According to Zoom, the company has been working to address hacking incidents over the past few months and has, in blog posts, identified privacy and security as two of its advancement goals.

Even so, the lawsuit said Zoom’s alleged negligence, breach of privacy and breach of implied contract were among the church’s causes for filing a class action lawsuit, along with questions of financial benefits. also raised in the court record.

“Zoom’s promises of privacy and data security are false,” the lawsuit said.

A Zoom spokesperson addressed the lawsuit in a statement shared Thursday with Newsweek. “We were deeply shocked to learn of this incident, and our hearts go out to those affected by this horrific event,” the spokesperson said. “Words cannot express how strongly we condemn such behavior. The same day we learned of this incident, we identified the culprit, took action to block his access to the platform and reported him to the relevant authorities.

“We encourage users to report any such incidents either to Zoom so that we can take appropriate action, or directly to law enforcement authorities. We also encourage all meeting hosts to take advantage of the features of Zoom’s recently updated security and to follow other best practices, including making sure you don’t widely share logins and passwords for online meetings, as appears to be the case here.”

This story has been updated with a statement from Zoom.