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Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#111

Post by nerdponx »

dsiroker wrote: post #22

We are building a privacy-first transcription & recording solution. Sign up at https://www.rewind.ai for early access or if you are super eager email me at dan@ at the domain above.

Unless it's entirely self-hostable and/or runs entirely locally on the user's machine, it's a hard pass from me.

Also, this marketing copy makes your product sound a lot more like some kind of AI hype scam than an actual product:

> What if we could use technology to augment our memory the same way a hearing aid can augment our hearing? This question is why we founded Rewind. > > Our vision is to give humans perfect memory. > > We are building a search engine for your life.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#112

Post by karanmg »

> Are there other, more privacy oriented transcription services anyone can recommend?

Yes. Try https://aliceapp.ai, the iOS app's in the AppStore: https://aliceapp.ai/app. I created this specifically to be as privacy conscious as possible. There's a small, but strong team of engineers behind this and I'm the primary investor. It's not perfect, but works pretty well, with many relying on it everyday.

From the FAQs: https://aliceapp.ai/faqs

Is Alice secure?

* We don't ask for your name.

* We don't require your real email address, nor your phone number.

* We don't use passwords to login, to avoid easy or re-usable passwords. The login process is Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) by design.

* We don't track your location.

* We don't ask for access to your contacts.

* We don't ask you to allow push notifications.

* We don't store your credit card information in our database.

* We don't use tools like Google Analytics to track your behavior.

* We don't drop any cookies from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera (i.e. any social network) to track browsing habits.

* We aren't on social networks. Our focus is on the product and on communicating directly with you via email, text or phone. We are not into the game of getting "likes".

* We don't prompt you to give us a five-star rating on the App Store.

* We don't annoy you with newsletter signup popups.

* We don't serve you ads.

* Alice is only listening when it's obviously recording. Otherwise the mic is off by default.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#113

Post by KingOfCoders »

dsr_ wrote: post #101
KingOfCoders wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you show the content and layout of an email with cryptographic signing? You could sign the screenshot with a timestamp (out of my league though to get that right) from an untamperable source to show it hasn't been tampered with. Did you mean that?

Every day, generate an archive of all the email you received. Encrypt it, sign it, and generate a hash. Put all the hashes on a public page. Write the procedure up, and have a VP attest that they ordered this done and have audited a random sample to ensure that it was done to spec. Get the attestation notarized. Repeat once a quarter or so. If the VP moves on or dies, make sure the new VP is on board immediately. No…

I don't know if saving the email with all inline images and downloading all external images, having the mail clients to render this as it was at the time, packaging this up, etc. is easier than taking a screenshot (like E.g. Litmus does) E.g. for offers in an image.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#114

Post by [deleted] »

turtleman1338 wrote: post #27
xyos wrote: post #15

I just deleted my account because of that, also they share conversations with everyone in the meeting by DEFAULT, it wasn't nice receiving a message from a co-worker telling me that he received an email with the transcription it generated.

If some of the participants are located in the EU this is a GDPR violation.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#116

Post by anigbrowl »

karanmg wrote: post #112

> Are there other, more privacy oriented transcription services anyone can recommend? Yes. Try https://aliceapp.ai , the iOS app's in the AppStore: https://aliceapp.ai/app . I created this specifically to be as privacy conscious as possible. There's a small, but strong team of engineers behind this and I'm the primary investor. It's not perfect, but works pretty well, with many relying on it everyday. From the FAQs:…

It's unfortunate you were downvoted. Perhaps it's because you're self-promoting, but you were up front about it and your pitch was relevant and focused on user needs.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#119

Post by handoflixue »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #109
Etheryte wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the bot transcribes anything GDPR considers personal data and then emails it out you're already in breach. Simply someone telling their phone number to another participant over the call would result in a violation.

It wouldn't be in breach. otherwise, you sending an email with someone's email/phone number via gmail in it would cause Google to breach it. That would be on the software user. If you use somewhere that to breach GDPR, the software provider is not liable for how the user uses it.

If the software is transcribing and sending emails without the user's awareness, much less permission... then the responsibility must rest with the software. Software isn't responsible for my deliberate decisions, but it is responsible for anything it does without consulting me.

Re: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

#120

Post by karanmg »

anigbrowl wrote: post #116
karanmg wrote: post #112

> Are there other, more privacy oriented transcription services anyone can recommend? Yes. Try https://aliceapp.ai , the iOS app's in the AppStore: https://aliceapp.ai/app . I created this specifically to be as privacy conscious as possible. There's a small, but strong team of engineers behind this and I'm the primary investor. It's not perfect, but works pretty well, with many relying on it everyday. From the FAQs:…

It's unfortunate you were downvoted. Perhaps it's because you're self-promoting, but you were up front about it and your pitch was relevant and focused on user needs.

Thank you.

It is up to us to do something about making our software more privacy conscious. And management/leaders/founders have to put up the money to support it.

This project is also an experiment to see if its possible to build a "successful" app without user behavior tracking, without endless AB testing.. and so far it seems totally possible.

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