Network Connections (Network Traffic)

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1

All the instances where obsidian generates network traffic

  1. When you open one of your notes that embeds online content. For example, an image ![cat](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Cat_poster_1.jpg)
  2. Periodically check for updates (can be disabled in the settings)
  3. When you access your Obsidian account in Settings
  4. When you use Obsidian Sync
  5. When you use Obsidian Publish
  6. When you browse/download third-party themes
  7. When you browse/download third-party plugins
  8. If you have third party plugins enabled, there is a check, done once every 12 hours from the time the app starts up, which fetches a file hosted on GitHub we use to issue “plugin deprecations”. This file is used to remotely disable specific versions of plugins that are known to malfunction, cause data loss, or could potentially be vulnerable or malicious.
  9. The dictionary file for each language is downloaded on first use.
  10. The plugins you enable can also generate network traffic

Bonus:

  • DNS requests if a hostname needs to be resolved before establishing a connection (including DNS over HTTPS).
40 Likes
3

Not that I’m not trusting you, but I just want to brute force all supporting evidence for that. How do I check these statements, and how do I know if my checking tool is not compromised?

4

Install a traffic monitor and look for yourself.

1 Like
5

I wanted click-to-load for online content, instead of automatically loading remote resources like images and embeds. So I blocked the Obsidian executable in the firewall.
In the space of 8 minutes it logged 700 firewall events, outbound towards the following IP addresses:

104.18.12.173
104.18.13.173
104.21.68.203
172.67.198.115
2606:4700:3036::6815:44cb
2606:4700:3036::ac43:c673
2606:4700::6812:cad
2606:4700::6812:dad
fe80::1227:f5ff:fe12:8a70

The IPv4 ones are Cloudflare from San Francisco, but I don’t know what it’s about.

I’m not signed in, don’t have automatic updates turned off in settings, and these are my community plugins:

[
  "calendar",
  "obsidian-editor-shortcuts",
  "nldates-obsidian",
  "obsidian-wikipedia"
]
1 Like
6

I’ve been monitoring Obsidian traffic on Linux (v1.8.4 AppImage) for about a week, and haven’t seen anything like this.

Just wanted to add re. this,

that the host is raw.githubusercontent.com (rather than the gist.github.com sometimes used by other applications).

I’ve also seen connections to fonts.googleapis.com. Haven’t installed any theme.

Thanks @WhiteNoise for clarifying the connections.

7

Hi Everyone :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m new in here and this will become my first post :slight_smile:

I know this is an old thread but it hit the head of the nail.
I just started to use Obsidian today… and i was starting to swear as we all do more or less learning new software. LOL :rofl:
Then Obsidian tried to connect to *****45c-5gol. googlevideo .com and i just looked at my firewall message and thinking… what now!!! :astonished: as i haven’t written a single ink in the different notes.

as i Block all google related content as i boycotting Google as a company, no traffic went out.

Do you guys know why this is happening and is it possible to tweak some settings in Obsidian to prevent network connections unless asked for?

I have set updates to manual and i have no account and i will not get one as i dont want to sync or have any cloud solutions what so ever.

I use Debian and installed Obsidian the last version with the Deb package.

I thank you all in advance for any kind of help :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

8

it should have been Internet Link… not ink lol
It seems not be possible to edit my post, so i add this quote as an edit. :blush: