Manual Privacy
How Neato Echo is secured
Where your data sits, how API keys are protected, and what the app does and doesn't expose on the network.
Short version: there is no server side. Your notes and history are an ordinary database file on your PC, protected by your Windows account and your disk encryption. Any cloud provider API keys you enter are encrypted through Windows' own credential protection. Everything the app runs binds to your own machine by design, and the few outbound connections it makes are over TLS.
Where your data is
| Where | What protects it |
|---|---|
| Notes, history and settings | Your Windows account and your disk encryption (BitLocker, if you use it) |
| Cloud provider API keys | Encrypted through Windows DPAPI, tied to your user account |
| Model downloads and updates | Fetched over HTTPS from huggingface.co and github.com |
| Cloud provider requests | TLS to the provider you configured, if you configured one |
| Calendar sync | OAuth sign-in in your browser, read-only access, TLS to Google/Microsoft |
There is no Neato Ventures database, so there's nothing of yours at rest on our side to encrypt.
How your API keys are stored
Keys you enter under Settings → Cloud Providers are encrypted using
Electron's safeStorage, which hands off to DPAPI, Windows' built-in
credential protection. The encrypted blobs sit in a secure-keys folder inside
Neato Echo's application data (%APPDATA%\neato-echo), and they can only be
decrypted by your own Windows user account on that PC.
They are never sent to Neato Ventures.
The desktop app
- Loopback-only by design. Every connection out is client-initiated over
TLS on port 443 — to github.com for updates, huggingface.co for model
downloads, and to a calendar or cloud provider only if you connected one.
A few components listen on
127.0.0.1so the app's own local pieces can talk to each other — the local speech server, the local language-model server, the vector search index for notes, and a callback catcher for calendar sign-in. None of them accept connections from other machines. - Context isolation is on, with a restricted preload bridge between the app's interface and the parts of it that can reach your system.
- Native helpers are compiled from source during the build — the key listener, the microphone monitor and the meeting audio helper aren't downloaded binaries.
- Open source. The full source is on GitHub, so all of the above can be checked rather than taken on trust.
Where our compliance stands
We'd rather be precise here than impressive.
Neato Echo carries no compliance attestations — no SOC 2, no HIPAA attestation, no ISO 27001 — and Neato Ventures does not offer a BAA or a DPA. That's because there's nothing to attest over: the app processes your data on your PC, not on our infrastructure. If your organization needs a formal vendor review, the honest answer is that the security posture is your own PC's posture plus whichever cloud provider or calendar you choose to connect. For your IT team says this in the form reviewers usually want.
Reporting a security issue
Email [email protected], or use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting. Please don't open a public issue for a security problem.
Related
Still need help?
Write to [email protected] with your Windows version, your Neato Echo version (Settings → System), and what you were doing. A person reads every message.