As the world shifts to telecommuting, Zoom, one of the most popular video conferencing apps, has millions of new users and its stock price is actually rising while most economies are in steep decline. Unfortunately, Zoom's software is also a narc and incredibly eager to tell on those who use Zoom.

Zoom has a feature called "Attendee Attention Tracking" that says: "If an attendee has not focused on the Zoom Desktop Client or mobile app for more than 30 seconds while someone is sharing their screen, the host can display an indicator on the attendee panel of the meeting or webinar can be displayed on the participant panel of the meeting or webinar. Focused" means that the user has a view of the Zoom meeting open and active.

30 seconds...that's how long it takes for Zoom to cry to its boss: Hey, this idiot isn't paying attention! What if you've been scouring your e-mail for information relevant to the discussion? What if you were reading about Half-Life? You are reading about Alix because someone is presenting the 47th chart. What if you were following the legends in Hearthstone and listening carefully, of course?

If hours of virtual meetings are your personal hell, Zoom's attention tracking feature is a hot poker in your eye,

in that it demands that you let Zoom track your window focus, Here's a bit of good news; under [Account Settings], you can disable attention tracking. This option is, of course, also for supervisors, as Zoom helpfully explains on its website:

"(Optional) If you want to make this setting mandatory for all users in your account, click the lock icon, then click [Lock] to confirm your setting."]

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If you have to suffer through remote meetings for hours a day, the least you can do is minimize the window when you know it is safe. The ingenious method of looping your own video to make it look like you are paying attention during the meeting has already been devised, but minimizing the window when someone is giving a presentation doesn't work.

Be on people's side, Zoom. Let us slack off in these stressful times. For starters, this is our seventh meeting today (or first...)