
Evernote Employees Can Read Your Notes - onewhonknocks
http://lifehacker.com/evernote-employees-can-read-your-notes-and-theres-no-w-1790099958
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mobitar
I'm seeing a lot of people talking about wanting to switch to something else,
and that something else usually takes the form of "{name of another private
corporation} Notes App". How much longer are we going to continue playing this
game?

I'm working on an open protocol that standardizes the encryption and ownership
of notes.

See [https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)

Would love any feedback/help. If you'd like to contribute, send me a message.

~~~
meesterdude
this is great! I like the ruby implementation.

I stopped working on an app in this space because encryption wasn't up to
snuff; but I also needed to use powerful search, and could not figure out how
to merge the two conceptually.

I would love to create software that people can use, and have absolutely
nothing to do with their data; i just don't know how that's feasible when
meshed with other technologies.

~~~
mobitar
I think clients are plenty powerful to do their own searching. Server should
store encrypted data, client should decrypt and manipulate the data as desired
by the user.

Shoot me a message if you'd like to help out. me@bitar.io

~~~
hellbanner
If clients can pick from servers to store, or use something decentralized
similiar to [https://storj.io](https://storj.io) , even better. Thank you for
working on this.

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rajuvegesna
This reminded me of this post.

"...companies don’t get killed by competition, they usually find creative ways
to commit suicide."

[https://www.zoho.com/general/blog/companies-don-t-get-
killed...](https://www.zoho.com/general/blog/companies-don-t-get-killed-by-
competition-they-commit-suicide.html)

Evernote let their CEO and some key people go, then we have seen significant
price increases and now this privacy episode. 'creative ways to commit
suicide' indeed.

Disclosure: We compete with Evernote.

~~~
bgdkbtv
What is your product?

~~~
rajuvegesna
Notebook [http://zoho.com/notebook](http://zoho.com/notebook)

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aq3cn
Evernote has been shooting itself in it's foot.

First restriction on being able to sync data to only two devices and now this
privacy policy.

useful thread for note taking app recommendation:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064215)

my recommendations:

[http://www.zim-wiki.org/](http://www.zim-wiki.org/)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/scrapbook-x/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/scrapbook-x/)

~~~
lj3
zim-wiki isn't bad, but it has some serious cross-platform issues that make it
a no go for me. I copy and paste things from the web in linux that Windows
can't read. Instead of just saying 'we won't show you this note', the whole
program refuses to open. Then I have to engage in a witchhunt because the logs
are useless for tracking down which characters need to be changed and which
files contain them.

I'm just saying... I want to love zim-wiki, but it's hard to love it when it
stabs me in the eye.

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upofadown
If your notes are not encrypted then obviously some employees will be able to
read your notes. This just states when employees will be able to officially
read your notes. Any potential problems come from what they might officially
do with your information. The allowed uses listed in the privacy policy don't
sound much different than those found in most privacy policies I have seen.

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kieranr
Creepy. It's pretty common to see companies use
[https://fullstory.com/](https://fullstory.com/),
[http://www.inspectlet.com/](http://www.inspectlet.com/) or other session-
capturing tools now - and they wouldn't say anything in the privacy policy.

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singularity2001
"If you’re worried about the content of your notes falling under the eyes of
an employee or through a government request, you can always encrypt them..."
Don't be fooled: unless you can specify your own key and your un-backdoored
encryption algorithm this feature is worthless.

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gotofritz
I don't get it - they could ALWAYS read your notes ("if We need to do so for
troubleshooting purposes;" said the old T&Cs). The only thing they added is
the new machine learning thing, from which you can opt out. And you can
encrypt your notes (but I haven't used it so I don't know how useful their
encryption is).

What is everyone going to do, move over to a Microsoft product? Oh yeah,
because THEY are definitively to be trusted. I mean it's not as if they've put
backdoors in their OSes or anything.

I don't see it as a great change TBH. You must always assume that they WILL
read your stuff (and if not them, hackers will do). If you really want to
protect something create an encrypted disk image and store that on Dropbox or
the like.

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praveenperera
I've been using the Quiver app recently. And so far I love it. You can sync it
using Dropbox or whatever cloud service you want.

[http://happenapps.com](http://happenapps.com)

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mrbill
What keeps me from moving to another note software is the right-click "save
this web page to evernote" extension that I've come to rely on (for online
purchase receipts, bill paying, etc).

~~~
aq3cn
Why don't you try ScrapBook addon of Firefox? You can sync data between all
your devices using cloud of your choice as your data is saved in the specified
folder.

It has option to export to epub or chm or pdf, in a case if you need it to
read it in mobile device.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScrapBook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScrapBook)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/scrapbook-x/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/scrapbook-x/)

I have been long user of it and find it very help to take web clippings or
notes in web browser.

~~~
mrbill
I'm a diehard Chrome convert for years now and won't go back to Firefox...

~~~
gommm
I'm curious as to why. Firefox has made a lot of improvements and is now much
better than chrome when it comes to memory usage.

~~~
mrbill
Memory usage isn't a concern; all of my boxes have at least 16G if not more.

What made me move away from FF (especially on OSX/x86) is being able to sit
there and _watch it redraw_ its own window decorations/"chrome". Adding a few
extensions/plugins just made it slower.

I've got it installed (and updated) on all of my machines "just in case" I run
into a site that's broken with Chrome or Safari, but I still have no desire to
switch back to it for full-time use.

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valbaca
This just in: The Cloud is just someone else's computer.

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swagv1
Great message after I abandoned Evernote with their ludicrous sync fees.

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angry_napkin
I've very much enjoyed Bear.

Evernote? I don't think about you at all.

~~~
makeset
Bear uses CloudKit, so your privacy is subject to Apple's private keys instead
of Evernote's. Is that a significant difference?

~~~
angry_napkin
There are significant differences in the two companies and how they approach
privacy, so yes.

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jacek
You can opt out by unchecking "Allow Evernote to use business data to improve
my experience”. I love hypocritical euphemisms companies use to get to your
data.

~~~
dsabanin
Apparently, that doesn't help with employees being able to read your notes:

[https://twitter.com/AdronBuske/status/808775903841046528](https://twitter.com/AdronBuske/status/808775903841046528)

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Slackwise
I would love to use org-mode for all my notes, but a lack of web-based editor
that I would be able to use on the go makes it less convenient. Maybe worth
doing as a personal project.

