Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

that's really corcerning for user privacy!!

This is an unintended benefit of being on a Linux workstation - the only client available is the browser.

yuck.

They 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

Are 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.

Thank 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.

This 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.

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.

Well, 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.

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.

What 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.

If 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.

While 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.

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 Notifications > Desktop meeting detection notification.

source: I work for Notion

This is unethical and creepy behavior - Notion team reading this: How exactly did you come up with this?

As 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.

I 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.

A 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

361 points within 5 hours, 112 comments but off the frontpage. Why @dang?

This is so frustrating.

macOS 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.

Is "network port analysis" the same thing Facebook was recently getting (justified) heat for? Basically snooping local ports to see what apps are running?