Evernote Employees Allowed To Read Users' Notes

Tay

Tay

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There has been trouble brewing at the old Evernote factory as it continues it's downward spiral. First the price hike in the summer time (Evernote Price Increase) after a string of high level executives and founders leaving. They also dropped unprofitable operations and have gone through an investor mark-down (Evernote Is In Deep Trouble AND An investor has shredded the value of its stake in Dropbox, Cloudera, and other billion-dollar startups) which is never a good sign, a long with a string of layoffs.

Now there is a privacy concern brewing about employees being allowed to read users notes while aiding machine learning (Google is involved). As the cloud continues to invade our lives the question we have to ask ourselves as consumers is when do we push back?

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Sources:
https://twitter.com/ragso/status/808796392747663364
https://twitter.com/evernote/status/808771784367542272
https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/235660588
 
Shit man.

I love evernote, but I hardly use it.

got a lot of stuff stored on it though.
 
LImiting access to two devices irked me. I suppose it's time to finally dump them - I've used them for tons of projects too... iCloud notes doesn't compare, Maybe OneNote is better.
 
Is there any more information on this? It clearly says you can opt out for the machine learning stuff exclusively. As far as other employees, every company has engineers that have access to everything.
 
Damn. If I could make the switch to an alternative solution I would, but I can't find another note taking program that offers the type of ubiquity, web clipping features and organization that EN has..

But yeah, there was definitely a lot of scope-creep going on. I found it strange that EN never focused on some of its most requested features (e.g. Deeper folder/file hierarchy).

Likewise, EN could have seriously tapped it's business demographic a bit more by offering more project management tools and plugins. Ppl were practically begging for it...
 
Isn't this already a thing for basically any SaaS?

I asked a question about it a few months ago here, where an employ of a PM tool was able to read all my projects tasks users etc.

I don't get why people are bitching now. Included in their TOS or not, they probably do it and can do it anyway.

Btw try one note from M$ lads, I switched over there about 1.5 years ago from Evernote. Has a web clipper too
 
Joke's on you Evernote, I keep all of my notes written sloppily in pencil in a messy pile on my desk so nobody can read them.
 
I'd say it's about what they aren't saying. It's not just the ability to read your notes to help you. It's that they are being constantly read and used in "machine learning" aka they're selling your data off for marketing purposes. And I'd bet they leaned too heavily on that instead of trying to improve the product, and that's why they're tanking.
 
Ryuzaki said:
they're selling your data off for marketing purposes.
Click to expand...
But....

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Michael said:
I asked a question about it a few months ago here, where an employ of a PM tool was able to read all my projects tasks users etc.
Click to expand...

The problem is this is ALL new to ALL of us. So what you might think is private the company hosting your data might assume you realize by simply storing data on someone else's servers it's technically possible to gain access even through a breach, so it's not that private.

I personally would never store anything like password (I do not condone lastpass), photos, or anything sensitive in a device I cannot destroy if it comes down to it. Once it's on the internet on some server, who knows how many copies of that data exist on backup RAIDs and backup servers and backup zip files stored for infinity.

Look at the Fappening and all the celebrities that have iCloud photo backup enabled automatically. It's a double edge sword, on one hand if you lost your phone or got it stolen, you still have access to your precious photos - the benefit. The dark secret is though, technically anyone within the company that is technically skilled can gain access to that data. That's why I talk about never communicating with gmail customers if you are selling PBNs or doing any SEO, but that falls on deaf ears and people's PBNs keep getting "found out" mysteriously.

The internet isn't magic, you should realize at the core basic level you are storing your data on someone else's computer/server/device - one which you do not have access to 24/7 in cases of emergency.

Think about this as well - even if you delete your account after downloading/exporting your data - you have zero ways of deleting the data from past scheduled backups or TAPE backups like Google does.

As an individual you have to take extra time and steps to understand what data of yours is stored where and with whom - disable future uses of people you don't want to have a copy of.

As companies we have to take the extra time and secure data as best as possible but also figure out how to explain to users what's going on with their data.

As a society we have to continue putting pressure on companies that keep moving the line of what's acceptable and start pushing back collectively on "going too far".

It's getting to the point the person that never uses the internet will be the invisible man and therefore have a superpower.
 
Reaffirming Our Commitment to Your Privacy
Evernote recently announced a change to its privacy policy and received a lot of customer feedback expressing concerns. We’ve heard that feedback and we apologize for the poor communication.
We have decided not to move forward with those changes that would have taken effect on January 23, 2017. Instead, in the coming months we will be revising our existing Privacy Policy. The main thing to know is this: your notes remain private, just as they’ve always been.
Evernote employees have not read, and do not read, your note content. We only access notes under strictly limited circumstances: where we have your permission, or to comply with our legal obligations.
Your privacy, and your trust in Evernote are the most important things to us. They are at the heart of our company, and we will continue to focus on that now and in the future.
Learn more
​
 
"Evernote employees have not read, and do not read, your note content. We only access notes under strictly limited circumstances: where we have your permission, or to comply with our legal obligations."

This part confuses me.

"We have never done this, and here are the only circumstances under which we've done this."

I guess it could mean they have 'accessed' the notes, but not 'read' them? So if they're legally required to 'access' the notes, they'll pass them on to law enforcement without 'reading' it themselves?
 
Potatoe said:
"Evernote employees have not read, and do not read, your note content. We only access notes under strictly limited circumstances: where we have your permission, or to comply with our legal obligations."
Click to expand...
It basically means they can read your notes. The second sentence literally contradicts the first sentence if you take it explicitly. If employees "have not read and do not read your notes" - how can they access them when you give them permission?

The first sentence is there to soften the blow to the reality - employees can read your notes if they really wanted to - exactly what the second sentence states in not so many words. Encrypt your data and you should be okay going forward or just move away from systems which continue to invade your privacy.
 
Glad I never used evernote now. God knows what is in half the stored notes that im sure employees are routinely reading. Having yearsa go worked for a government department, with restricted information on people, the reading of personal info was rampant and that was with the supposed risk of charges. Subsequently, I laugh at any company that has a "policy" against reading client info/notes....the reality is that staff are likely to do this routinely.
 
This already happens with a lot of machine learning services. Do you use Alexa or Cortana? People are going to listen to your stuff. I think Apple is the only one that says they don't and all the processing happens on your device, although I wouldn't be shocked if they where lying. If you use these kind of services you should not expect what you give them to be private. Scary future.
 
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