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Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
If you have the Notion Desktop App installed, you may have started to notice a "In a meeting? Start AI Meeting Notes" notification pop up exactly when you are joining a virtual meeting (e.g. joining a Google Meet on Firefox).
At first, I assumed it must have been using my Google Workspace account to snoop on my calendar. But then I started to notice it would notify exactly when I joined even if I was late and the meeting had previously started.
This was the response from Notion Support after they worked with the Notion Engineering team.
> Meeting Detection Architecture:
> - The system uses a sophisticated dual-detection approach: microphone monitoring combined with network port analysis
> - Detection is implemented separately for macOS and Windows at the native operating system level
I've uninstalled the Notion Desktop App...
- nihalbaig 1y agothat's really corcerning for user privacy!!
- whalesalad 1y agoThis is an unintended benefit of being on a Linux workstation - the only client available is the browser.
- JoshTriplett 1y agoThis kind of thing is one of many reasons I refuse to install Zoom/Discord/etc apps. Stay in your sandboxed browser tab.
- runjake 1y agoNotion and all these kinds of apps are available for Linux. But yeah, I don't recommend using them. Just use them in the browser.
- whalesalad 1y agoThere is no "native" app for Linux.
- runjake 1y agoBy your definition, there is no "native" app for any platform. It's all just Electron.
- whalesalad 1y agoin the context of this discussion, no. regardless of it being electron or not, there is no application that you can run on linux that could potentially abuse your system and leverage your microphone, screen capture, etc.
- rchaud 1y agoIf there's an app that started life in the browser, a desktop/native app can only make it worse. I don't use native apps for Youtube, Amazon, Slack etc for this purpose.
- catapart 1y agoyuck.
- _kush 1y agoThey only check if your mic is on, not what you're saying (they can't hear you unless you've granted mic permission). They also look at your network traffic to see if audio is being sent (otherwise you can get a lot of false positives). Using mic + network data is a common way to spot meetings -- my app LookAway[0] does something similar to pause reminders during calls. [0]: https://lookaway.app https://lookaway.app
- AlexandrB 1y agoI thought you had to give explicit permission for an app to monitor network traffic in macOS? I'm assuming your app asks for this, but it sounds like Notion does not if the GP was surprised by the monitoring.
- tbeseda 1y agoMy Notion install (macOS) asked to discover devices on my network. I'm assuming this permission is related to "monitoring network traffic".
- odo1242 1y agoYes, it would be that one
- simple10 1y agoThat's interesting. Although I wasn't able to find any confirming info that allowing the "locate local devices" permissions allows for network monitoring. It seems to only allow Bonjour and multicast DNS. Anyone know for sure what it allows?
- mh- 1y agoThis would certainly be news to me as well. Packet capture (even local) has historically required superuser perms, but I'm not up to speed on how MacOS permissions work in this regard since the launch of System/Network Extensions. After writing the above, I've just reviewed [0] - as much as I could in 5 minutes - and as far as I can tell it confirms our understanding. To do packet filtering or interception or reading, you'd need to do [1]. [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3179-understanding-local-network-privacy#Local-network-operations https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3179-u... [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/NetworkExtension/content-filter-providers https://developer.apple.com/documentation/NetworkExtension/c...
- e9a8a0b3aded 1y agoAre you saying that Notion desktop has access to microphone audio or it is only able to determine if the microphone is in use? The former is actually concerning to me. I can't imagine caring if it only knows my microphone is in use.
- _kush 1y agoIt's the latter. An app can't access the audio without explicit microphone monitoring permissions.
- Torwald 1y agoThank you for telling HN, much appreciated! I am concerned re privacy, so, thanks again. There is a rule in journalism to not burn one's sources, did you violate that rule in the OP? (I don't know, I am not a journalist.) We could invite Notion management to comment on this thread.
- rubyn00bie 1y agoThis is insane. The amount of absolutely sensitive audio they could be grabbing is unbelievable. And port analysis? Why anyone would think this sort of intrusion is acceptable is boggling my mind. It’s a writing app for god sakes. I hope the backlash from this is both severe and swift.
- untech 1y agoI’ve come to hate Notion with passion because of its abysmal performance, but I still pay for it for my small business. My non-technical employees use it as a database for clients, tasks, payments etc. I tried to research replacements several times, and still haven’t found anything good. Sometimes I wonder if I should build my own.
- baxtr 1y agoI really like Notion’s information architecture (in particular the top index pages) and its multi-user capability. I tried some other tools like Confluence and Obsidian but like you say, there seems to be no match from a UX perspective. Do I love Notion? Definitely not. Would I change to another tool with the same feature set? Instantly.
- dtkav 1y agoIf you like Obsidian and want it to be multiplayer you might be interested in Relay [0] (shameless plug). There are also plugins like make.md [1] that are focused more on making the UX feel more like notion. [0] https://relay.md https://relay.md [1] https://github.com/make-md/makemd https://github.com/make-md/makemd
- nickthesick 1y agoInteresting product. What do you use for the backend sync? I see CRDT so I assume Y.js? I’m building a Y.js sync server: https://github.com/nperez0111/teleportal https://github.com/nperez0111/teleportal
- dtkav 1y agoYeah, we use yjs and a fork of y-sweet [0]. We have a custom-built control plane that allows us to support many different types of relay server configurations (including self hosting, multi-tenant, per-relay, per-document) and optimize for cost. Your project looks cool -- especially sub-document support -- thanks for sharing [0] https://github.com/no-instructions/y-sweet https://github.com/no-instructions/y-sweet
- rob74 1y agoWell, to give them the benefit of doubt, this monitoring could be done in a (more or less) privacy sensitive way, e.g. by analyzing the frequency spectrum of the audio input without actually recording or transmitting it, or as others have suggested, maybe they're just checking if the microphone is in use. And for the network they're apparently only monitoring the ports, not the actual data. But still, it sounds like a feature for which they should provide an option to turn it off - or, even better, make it opt-in.
- Pi9h 1y agoIf anyone is looking for an alternative to Notion without the bloat, I’m building https://docmost.com https://docmost.com. It has a nice UI, real-time collaboration, diagrams support and more. You can self-host it too.
- moomoo11 1y agoVery cool. I wish tools like this could be embeddable. For example, being able to add it into existing apps.
- always_imposter 1y ago[dead]
- barbazoo 1y agoI love so much how nice this looks. But I wish this was Obsidian or rather, a standalone app. I don't want a web app for notes. Notes are all files. Different use case I know but I wish so much Obsidian looked and felt more like your app/Notion.
- barbazoo 1y agoLooking more into this, 4o actually produced a list of plugins that add functionality to do some of the things Notion excels at so that tells me that there probably is a way to get datatables etc.
- xelia 1y agoI self host docmost and love it, thank you for making it! Will you consider making it publishable as a wiki? The current share feature is close but forces me to share a specific URL and live-edit public pages.
- Pi9h 1y agoThe next sharing goal would be to make it possible to share an entire "Space", but not the "Workspace" itself. Would that fit the ideas you have in mind?
- jherdman 1y agoIf you go to "Settings > Notifications > Desktop meeting detections notifications" you can turn this feature off. I haven't verified if the mic and traffic sniffing is correspondingly turned off though.
- sevenseacat 1y agoI don't have this setting on Mac.
- nashashmi 1y agoWhat is notion? I have been pulling my hair trying to learn these new no code db tools. And I think I have come to a simple explainer. It is a list of documents built with (something called) block-editors. Each document can be given properties. The properties get listed into columns. The columns are fields. The documents are rows. And that makes a database table. In reverse, it is a database table of records. One record can be can be configured with various fields, plus a document "canvas" made by a block-editor. The block editors can import and display views (aka queries) of database tables. And that is what makes it a full circle spaghetti. A document (listed in a database) can display a database table.
- like_any_other 1y agoWhile both have privacy implications, I'd rather we distinguish 'monitoring' that exfiltrates your data to their servers, and offline-only 'monitoring', used only for legitimate, benign purposes of the program itself.
- wustep 1y agoHey! 1. Notion records audio only during your use of the Meeting Notes feature. Here are the docs: https://www.notion.com/help/ai-meeting-notes https://www.notion.com/help/ai-meeting-notes 2. Notion desktop app has notifications about meetings that ask you if you want to use Meeting Notes, it recognizes this by detecting that your microphone is on (i.e. it does not listen to audio coming from your microphone). This feature is a setting in preferences btw, under Notifications > Desktop meeting detection notification. source: I work for Notion
- chinathrow 1y agoFrom 1) > If you do not want the AI Meeting Notes feature available to your users, administrators may opt-out their workspace at any time via the toggle available in their console. Here's your problem: Make this opt-in.
- rchaud 1y agoAI features + user opt-in are mutually exclusive at this point.
- jitl 1y agoTo elaborate: The Notion desktop app will observe if there is a process running on your computer that is actively using your microphone, such as Zoom. Notion does not and cannot listen to the audio coming from your microphone ambiently or snoop on the signal received by another application. This detection is done purely based on the existing of a process using your microphone, not on the audio coming from the microphone. Users can verify this because the OS-level microphone indicator will show that Notion is not listening to their microphone. If one is detected, Notion will notify the user and try to associate it with a calendar event if you have connected your calendar. Connecting your calendar is not a requirement to receive this notification. Users can disable this behavior via their account settings in Settings > Notifications > Desktop meeting detection notifications. Only when the user has started a meeting note and clicked record, will Notion activate the user's microphone. We cannot do this without operating system mediated consent dialog, which is the way it should be! At this point Notion will show up as using the microphone in the OS indicators. (I work at Notion)
- chinathrow 1y agoThis is unethical and creepy behavior - Notion team reading this: How exactly did you come up with this?
- pat64 1y agoAs someone who has built an app that detects calls and meetings, this isn’t as nefarious as you’re making it out to be. You can detect patterns of hardware use that suggest you’re in a meeting without actually eavesdropping on an actual audio stream of any kind. Basically is some app using the mic hardware for something?? Likely a meeting so.
- shreddit 1y agoIt’s not necessarily about what they doing, more like how they do things. They could at least tell me about it, like: Hey, we check whether you joined a meeting to provide you with our note taking assistant. Are you okay with that? Don’t assume consent.
- toddmorey 1y agoI have a funny story: I went to go to a notion doc and just intuitively pressed command-O in the app to open the notion doc I wanted. Of course that command doesn’t open notion docs—what that does is turn on audio transcription. So two hours later, I realize I’ve transcribed at the bottom of our team overview page what read like the diary of a madman from fragments of conversation I was having with my wife and dog. I am glad I caught it and deleted it.
- TYPE_FASTER 1y agoDid it transcribe the dog? How long until we get a LLM that can translate dog barks...
- callalex 1y agoPeople are doing some interesting work in an attempt to categorize whale and dolphin communication https://blog.padi.com/talk-to-whales-with-ai/ https://blog.padi.com/talk-to-whales-with-ai/
- FredPret 1y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/TheFarSide/comments/1d041lu/hey_hey_hey/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFarSide/comments/1d041lu/hey_hey...
- sevenseacat 1y agoThat's not funny, that's horrifying.
- scblzn 1y agoA reminder that Notion still operates under the .so TLD [1] Why should you entrust them with your private notes and data? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113444
- chinathrow 1y ago361 points within 5 hours, 112 comments but off the frontpage. Why @dang?
- lion__93332 1y agoThis is so frustrating.
- pseudocomposer 1y agomacOS will always show the user yellow/green notifications in the menu bar when apps access the microphone/camera, as far as I understand. I keep Notion Desktop open pretty much all the time on my work laptop, and have not seen these. I’m happy to be wrong (well, in this case, I’d be upset at a big privacy violation)… but it seems pretty unlikely the audio monitoring is happening on macOS.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pull_my_finger 1y agoIs "network port analysis" the same thing Facebook was recently getting (justified) heat for? Basically snooping local ports to see what apps are running?