There is an increasing occurrence of virtual meetings being recorded and posted without consent or knowledge of PTAs. We hope this blog can provide some guidance on steps your PTA can take to try to protect itself from unauthorized recordings.
Be Careful of AI Meeting Assistants and Bots
Many AI meeting assistants (such as Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom, Rewatch, Read.ai, etc.) join meetings as participants, appearing in the attendee list with names like “OtterPilot for Jane Doe” or “Fireflies Notetaker.” They typically join via a meeting link or calendar integration on behalf of a legitimate meeting participant.
Some bots can scan websites for virtual meeting/event links and then register to attend. Upon joining your meeting, these bots can record audio and video and generate transcripts, even if your virtual meeting application’s internal recording feature is disabled. Depending on the bot’s settings, these recordings may be stored in the cloud and could inadvertently be shared on dashboards, team accounts, or made public via websites.
Before the Meeting
- Refer participants to your PTA policy stating that recording or transcribing meetings is not allowed. Reinforce this message in the “call to meeting” communications and start each meeting with an on-screen slide or by making a clear statement about the restrictions.
- Be sure to require registration for your meeting and request names, email addresses and other specific information like PTA name/number. Asking for specific information can discourage anonymous users or bots from easily registering for your meeting. Review the registrant list for any mismatched company names or domains. Any email address that has a suffix that is not .com, .org, .edu, .net or .us should be considered suspicious. You can reach out to verify that the suspicious email address is owned by an actual person or if it’s obvious, you can delete and block that address from the virtual event. Be on the lookout for email addresses like @otter.ai, @fireflies.ai, @read.ai, or @fathom.video that would indicate the presence of an AI meeting assistant. One other way to protect your registration link from bot access is to have it located in a password protected section of your website, if available.
- Update the meeting settings so that participants are not allowed to join the meeting before the host.
- Verify that the setting that allows hosts to give participants permission to record locally is disabled.
- Utilize a “Waiting Room” to admit only attendees who you recognize or who are on your registration list.
During the Meeting
- Actively monitor the participant list for unusual names or silent joiners without video. Remove any participants with names that include “AI,” “Notetaker,” “Bot,” or any unfamiliar company or participant name.
- Make sure you understand and can utilize your virtual meeting application’s security options to suspend participant activities, remove participants, or report suspicious behavior.
- If a participant requests to record, the host can choose not to grant recording access.
After the Meeting
- Some virtual meeting applications allow you to review an attendance report of your meeting which you can use to identify any unknown attendees or bots that might have joined briefly.
- If you discover a recording of your meeting online: Document where the meeting is posted (URL, date discovered) and contact the individual or company to request removal or report the content to the hosting platform (e.g., YouTube, Facebook).
For a refresher on why it’s not a great idea to have recordings of your PTA meetings floating around the internet, please check out this past blog from 2021 that is still relevant today, “7 Things You Need to Know About Recording and Live-streaming”.