Keep Your Granola Notes Secure: Adjust Your Sharing Settings Today

If you’re using Granola for note-taking, check your privacy settings

If you’re a user of the AI-powered note-taking app Granola, it’s essential to review your privacy settings. Granola claims that your notes are private by default, but in reality, they can be viewed by anyone with a link and are used for internal AI training unless you choose to opt out.

Granola positions itself as an “AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings.” The app integrates with your calendar to capture audio from your meetings, using AI to create a bulleted list of key points, which it labels as a “note.” You have the ability to edit these AI-generated notes, invite collaborators to view them, and even utilize Granola’s AI assistant to ask questions about your notes and review the meeting transcript they’re based on.

However, in Granola’s settings menu, there is a crucial disclaimer: “By default, your notes are viewable to anyone with the link.” This means that if you accidentally share a link, anyone on the web can access your notes, posing a significant risk if you’re discussing sensitive information in meetings. Upon testing this claim, it was discovered that accessing a note from a private browser window was possible without signing into a Granola account, revealing details about the note’s creator and creation timestamp.

While full access to the linked transcript was restricted, partial viewing was still possible. Clicking on one of the bullet points generated by Granola revealed a quote from the transcript related to the note, along with an AI-generated summary providing additional context about the conversation. Granola states on its website that “full transcript access is available to collaborators who open the same folder or note inside the Granola desktop app.”

We designed Granola’s share links to balance security, control, and ease-of-use. They work the same as a Dropbox link: links are unlisted, meaning they’re only created when you choose to share, and are invisible to search engines. Full transcripts are never accessible to anyone you haven’t explicitly shared a note with.

To adjust who can view your links, access Granola, click on your profile in the bottom-left corner of the screen, and select “Settings.” From there, navigate to the “Default link sharing” option and modify the setting from “Anyone with the link” to either “Only my company” or “Private.” Deleting the note will prevent anyone with the link from accessing it.

One LinkedIn user highlighted the public notes setting last year, emphasizing that “these links aren’t indexed, but if you share or leak one – even accidentally – it’s public to whoever finds it.” Furthermore, a source informed The Verge that a senior executive at a major company was denied use of the tool due to security concerns.

Source: Screenshot: The Verge

Granola also discloses that it “may use anonymized data” to enhance its AI models. Enterprise customers are automatically excluded from AI training, but users on other plans are not. Disabling AI training can be done by accessing the settings menu and turning off the “Use my data to improve models for everyone” option. Granola assures that enabling this setting does not permit third-party companies like OpenAI or Anthropic to utilize your data for AI training.

Regarding security, Granola states that notes are stored in a US-hosted Amazon Web Services private cloud, encrypted both at rest and in transit. The app does not retain audio from meetings, storing only meeting notes and transcripts, which are processed in the cloud.

Update, April 3rd: Granola’s statement has been included.