WOW, seriously have never encountered such a shady app or business ever (even though the product is great at what it does). The Wispr Team deactivated my Slack account on their workspace after asking polite and totally fair questions there in my mind. SERIOUSLY shady inner working in this app BEWARE. And RED FLAG how they treat their users.
My post on Slack before they banned me on their Slack (oh and I also said that I was going to uninstall because I realized after removing it from login items, because I was done with it for a while, only to realize THAT IT WILL INJECT ITSELF INTO YOUR LOGIN ITEMS AGAIN SOMEHOW ON LOGIN SO YOU LITERALLY CAN'T GET RID OF THE APP UNLESS YOU NUKE IT WITH APPCLEANER.
"Hey Wispr team,
I've been using Flow for a while now, and I've got to say, the functionality is impressive. However, I have several concerns:
1. System Integration:
The app for some reason ruins my right-click context menu in Firefox. Extension options in right-click context menus disappear on hover. I spent hours troubleshooting, even ended up nuking my Firefox setup, only to find out Flow was the culprit. What is it doing in Firefox anyway?
Suddenly, I'm seeing the Wispr Flow logo in my Chrome address bar. I don't remember enabling this, and there seems to be no way to turn this off?
The app adds itself to login items every time it's launched. This is not standard behavior and feels intrusive.
2. Resource Usage:
The app is a whopping 800MB, which feels kind of big for a dictation tool?
It's constantly using about 8% CPU, even when idle. What's it doing in the background?
Launch time is around 10 seconds with quirky loading messages. What's really happening during this "setup"?
3. Deep Integration and Privacy Concerns:
The onboarding checklist actually tracks actions across apps. It knew when I used Discord, ChatGPT, mail and other apps which I don't remember 100%. This level of system awareness is alarming.
Your promo video shows the app using context to correctly spell unusual names in emails. How exactly is this context gathered? Does it capture my screen or what?
4. Transparency Issues:
Your privacy policy is vague and broad. It doesn't provide clear limits on data use or specific explanations of what data is collected in different scenarios.
The policy mentions using customer content to train AI models. Does this include my dictations and the context you gather?
There's no clear documentation about the app's system interactions or the full extent of its capabilities.
5. Browser Integration:
The Chrome and Firefox integrations appeared without clear user consent or easy ways to disable them.
What exactly are these browser integrations doing? Are they monitoring my web activity?
6. Data Collection and Usage:
Given the app's deep integration and context awareness, what exactly are you collecting?
How is this data being used beyond the immediate dictation functionality?
Are you sharing this data with third parties? If so, with whom and for what purposes?
7. User Control:
There seems to be a lack of granular controls for the app's various integrations and features.
How can users opt out of specific data collection or feature integrations?
How can users opt out of injections into certain apps? Shouldn't it be opt-in?
8. Security Concerns:
With such deep system access, what security measures are in place to protect user data?
How are you safeguarding against potential misuse of the app's extensive permissions?
Don't get me wrong - the core functionality of Flow is impressive. The dictation accuracy, speed, and cross-app functionality are genuinely useful. But right now, using Flow feels like I've given an unknown entity unfettered access to my digital life. Given these concerns, I'm hesitant about becoming a paid subscriber.
We need some real transparency here:
1. Can you provide a detailed, technical explanation of Flow's system access and integration methods?
2. What specific data are you collecting, and how exactly is it being used and protected?
3. Can we get more granular user controls over the app's various features and integrations?
4. Are there plans to optimize the app's resource usage and size?
5. How are you ensuring user privacy and security given the app's deep system access?
I want to continue using Flow, but I need to fully understand what I'm permitting on my system. Looking forward to your detailed response."
I've got some email correspondence with them and I had more questions in the Slack which went unanswered.
Wispr Flow