Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network

[HoyaSaxa]

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...

[wustep]

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

[jitl]

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 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]

From 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.

[dml2135]

Why didn't Notion ask for my affirmative consent before monitoring my network traffic?

Are there other cases where Notion is monitoring my network traffic? If so, what are they?

[wustep]

FWIW, you can verify when any apps are recording microphone input by the OS's microphone indicator. I think Windows, Mac, and Linux all have one.

(edit: see what @jitl said)

[fusslo]

How does it work in two-party consent states?

Like, I can give my consent, but the meeting attendees can't, right?

Does Notion just listen to me, not my attendees?

I only ask because we got an email about recording meetings from HR/Legal a couple weeks ago and I never considered it before

[chaps]

Does any of that microphone detection stuff send anything over the network to Notion to indicate that the check was done, plus the check's results?

[CubsFan1060]

If it helps, this has been one of the most infuriating things for me in recent memory. I don't understand why this wasn't opt-in.

[DrillShopper]

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

[_kush]

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

[AlexandrB]

I 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.

[untech]

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.

[tummler]

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

[bschne]

Most intriguing thing in that vein I've seen: https://thymer.com (haven't used it, am not affiliated, just looked promising in a demo video esp. on performance grounds)

[baxtr]

I 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.

[armedgorilla]

I'm in the same boat. Since they decided to bundle in their AI features with their core product (at only a 30% price increase!), I've been looking for an exist route. But finding a single collaborative text editor + database designer replacement has been difficult.

[jraph]

> I wonder if I should build my own.

Please consider improving one of the existing open source solutions before doing this: XWiki, Nextcloud, wiki.js...

There's advanced stuff that already exists and we could use some cooperation to get better instead of another competitor in a crowded space.

(I work for XWiki SAS - you can also pay them to build what's missing for you)

[seanw444]

NocoDB perhaps? It's not a document-focused system, but you said they use it more as a database.

https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb

[tekawade]

There are many suggestions already let me through in one more: Affine : https://affine.pro/

You can self host too if you like. Not all features as Notion but comes very close. Seems more private too compared to Notion.

I am also looking for more private and secure Notion alternatives. My company doesn’t allow using Notion.

I like templates, tasks, scrum etc. which I use for personal use. But I am reluctant on saving any personal information in it.

[wustep]

Bummer performance is a problem for ya. We've worked on it a ton over the past year or two and generally performance should be much better across the board. Feel free to email me (username @ makenotion.com) if you have example pages that are slow you're willing to share. thanks!

[major505]

I used a lot for organizing my personal projects, endup changing to Microsoft Loop for client stuff. And Obsidian for personal stuff.

[dml2135]

The performance really is abysmal. I started using it years ago and the change from the early days has been drastic.

[paul-tharun]

outline - https://getoutline.com is pretty good and you can import all your notion spaces too.

[Pi9h]

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.

[xelia]

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.

[oehpr]

I've been looking for a tool like this that can publish. I was thinking of some way to create a help doc system for end users, but interleaved with technical information and discussion for devs. IE to make the help documentation a single source of truth for application behaviour.

All this needs to work is the ability to mark blocks of the document as "public" so only that gets published properly. Any possibility of doing this currently or interest in supporting in the future?

[barbazoo]

I 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.

[savolai]

I’m wondering if integrating this with nocodb mentioned above would work, as i also use databases in documents.

[moomoo11]

Very cool.

I wish tools like this could be embeddable. For example, being able to add it into existing apps.

[toddmorey]

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.

[TYPE_FASTER]

Did it transcribe the dog? How long until we get a LLM that can translate dog barks...

[sevenseacat]

That's not funny, that's horrifying.

[pat64]

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.

[shreddit]

It’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.

[rob74]

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.

[like_any_other]

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.

[e9a8a0b3aded]

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.

[_kush]

It's the latter. An app can't access the audio without explicit microphone monitoring permissions.

[jherdman]

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.

[sevenseacat]

I don't have this setting on Mac.

[nihalbaig]

that's really corcerning for user privacy!!

[rubyn00bie]

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.

[chinathrow]

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

[pull_my_finger]

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

[nashashmi]

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.

[pseudocomposer]

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.

[chinathrow]

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

[Torwald]

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.

[ipsum2]

He's not a journalist, why would he need to follow the rules of journalism?

[whalesalad]

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

[JoshTriplett]

This kind of thing is one of many reasons I refuse to install Zoom/Discord/etc apps. Stay in your sandboxed browser tab.

[rchaud]

If 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.

[runjake]

Notion and all these kinds of apps are available for Linux. But yeah, I don't recommend using them. Just use them in the browser.

[lion__93332]

This is so frustrating.

[scblzn]

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

[catapart]

yuck.