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Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

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Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#101

Post by __jonas »

tummler wrote: post #21
untech wrote: post #10

I’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.

Anytype ( https://anytype.io ), Appflowy ( https://appflowy.com )

Do you use Anytype productively?

I have it installed but I find it kind of daunting compared to Notion for organizing my notes, it seems to want to be a more abstract kind of 'knowledge management system'.

I just opened it again and it popped up a 'What's New' with phrases like 'Relations are now properties' and something about 'types', 'templates', 'sets' and 'queries', I really just want to take notes and organize them in a straightforward hierarchy.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#102

Post by const_cast »

brookst wrote: post #88
const_cast wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The application is almost certainly sending off data to Notion without consent, you just wouldn't be able to tell. If a company is willing to do even small privacy violations, I do not trust them at all. Feel free to run OpenSnitch or LittleSnitch - most apps are opening connections to many domains you won't recognize. Your guess is as good as anyone's what data they're exfiltrating. That is, of course, unless you us…

Any evidence for “almost certainly”? That seems a huge leap of faith to build a whole worldview on. Kind of circular, really.

Yes, virtually every commercial application I've ever seen allows exfiltration of data, usually close to all of it, and you agree to it by signing both an EULA and privacy policy.

Based off of that, I then assume that other companies are exfiltrating as much data as possible off my devices.

I mean, even your car, which, keep in mind, is a multi-tens-of-thousands dollar product, exfiltrates your location, all your texts, all your phone calls, and as much data from your phone as possible.

Yes, this is a "leap of faith". I am not bound by a purely evidence-based worldview - I consider that naivety. I do not need strong irrefutable evidence of bad things happening. When people are untrustworthy, I approach them with skepticism in order to protect myself.

For example, I have absolutely no proof that the NSA is surveilling SMS and telephony right now. None at all. But I know Prism was a thing. It is safe to assume the NSA is absolutely surveilling SMS and telephony.

And, I'm almost always right, in my experience.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#103

Post by Pi9h »

xelia wrote: post #24
Pi9h wrote: post #13

If anyone is looking for an alternative to Notion without the bloat, I’m building https://docmost.com . It has a nice UI, real-time collaboration, diagrams support and more. You can self-host it too.

I 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.

The 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?

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#104

Post by wustep »

DrillShopper wrote: post #96
wustep wrote: post #41

Hey! 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 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…

Can you give me a source beyond "just trust me, bro"?

your OS shows a microphone icon when apps are recording audio — when you use the app, you should see that when recording is on during the meeting transcription and off otherwise

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#105

Post by unsui »

jitl wrote: post #53
chinathrow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it opt-in and this would be not an issue.

Notion doesn't like making things opt-in. A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and show a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times. EDIT: shouldn't single out any specific role here. We think opt-out, enable-by-default makes a feature have far greater total utility. But we could do more to provide…

>Our PMs don't like making things opt-in

That is an implementation detail. What matters is the outcome:

Notion leadership has signed off on this being opt-out.

The calculus here, as you indicated, was that opt-in has little buy-in.

What leadership didn't take into account was the risk of this being publicized, and the blowback from this awareness.

That, or leadership has already calculated that not enough people will care (possibly true).

I suppose it's then up to those that do care to make more noise about this, to tilt the odds?, so this specific calculus (also known as enshittification) doesn't keep occuring (i.e, if the blowback costs are disproportionate to the value provided by default opt-out....)

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#106

Post by owebmaster »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #72
owebmaster wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Eddy, this simpleton scenario of yours is not more likely to be true than the evil scenario where the evil tech company invades users privacy and collect data it wasn't directly allowed for an extra profit.

I admit I haven’t been in any of the mustash twirling meetings. They probably happen, but I have also been in the room with engineers and PMs discussing solving problems with analytics attribution to user.

It is because when you get your attention fixed to the execution level you miss the strategic.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#107

Post by combyn8tor »

jitl wrote: post #45
wustep wrote: post #41

Hey! 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 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…

To 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 microph…

While you're here - can you tell your PM's that your auto update on windows is annoying. Every time I start the app there's a prompt asking me to either "Install and Relaunch" or "Remind me later" (which seems to just hassle me again on next app start). The worst part is the pop-up doesn't show until 5-10 seconds after I start the app. So I'll start the app, start clicking around and then I'm interrupted by this pop-up. This seems to happen every day because you push a lot of updates.

I'd prefer an option to silently grab non-security/non-fix updates once every [Day, Week, Month] in the background, and install automatically on next app start up. Urgent updates can happen immediately. The default should be every week as every update is around 85mb. You could go a step further and have an option to only download over WiFi.

As for the mic "issue", I'm not sure what everyone's on about. Acting like it's the first app on Windows to monitor what the system is doing to provide a feature.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#108

Post by pksebben »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #72
owebmaster wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Eddy, this simpleton scenario of yours is not more likely to be true than the evil scenario where the evil tech company invades users privacy and collect data it wasn't directly allowed for an extra profit.

I admit I haven’t been in any of the mustash twirling meetings. They probably happen, but I have also been in the room with engineers and PMs discussing solving problems with analytics attribution to user.

Given the structure of hierarchical orgs, both can (and likely are) true.

Moustache-twirler A: We've identified these metrics that correlate with increased shareholder value

Moustache-twirler B: But what do those metrics say about user privacy?

(both laugh. This is very funny)

MT A: no but really, fire any PMs that don't make these go up and let the survivors figure out why

MT B: sounds great. See you at golf this weekend

(some time later, in a less fancy conference room)

Engineer: This new feature is great, but could be construed as an invasion of privacy. Can we make it opt-in?

PM (panicking): Oh good heavens, no! Also send the opt-out button to the UX team, that way it doesn't come down on us.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#109

Post by bGl2YW5j »

__jonas wrote: post #101
tummler wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytype ( https://anytype.io ), Appflowy ( https://appflowy.com )

Do you use Anytype productively? I have it installed but I find it kind of daunting compared to Notion for organizing my notes, it seems to want to be a more abstract kind of 'knowledge management system'. I just opened it again and it popped up a 'What's New' with phrases like 'Relations are now properties' and something about 'types', 'templates', 'sets' and 'queries', I really just want to take notes and organize…

These concepts have been copied directly from Notion.

I’ve found Anytype to be more streamlined. I’m highly familiar with Notion though, so adapted easily.

Re: Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

#110

Post by const_cast »

viraptor wrote: post #92
const_cast wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The application is almost certainly sending off data to Notion without consent, you just wouldn't be able to tell. If a company is willing to do even small privacy violations, I do not trust them at all. Feel free to run OpenSnitch or LittleSnitch - most apps are opening connections to many domains you won't recognize. Your guess is as good as anyone's what data they're exfiltrating. That is, of course, unless you us…

That's just entirely based on the "almost certainly" doing all the work. You're complaining about a hypothetical situation. > you just wouldn't be able to tell. You can setup a local web proxy and tell us. Also check the sources since it's an electron app.

I don't use notion, but it would be a fun experiment to install a root CA and see the traffic.

It's probably not always this easy. I see many connections on apps using UDP, so who knows how, exactly, they are encoded.

The data may also be "encrypted", similar to how Zoom "encrypted" data. That is to say, the data is encrypted, but the private key is on the same server. So, if you MITM, it looks encrypted - but there's no security.

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