Evernote Reverses Course On Opt-out Privacy Policy That Would've Exposed Users' Content To Employees (venturebeat.com) 52
Evernote has withdrawn planned changes to its privacy policy that would have permitted some employees to view the content of users' note, as the company works on new features that rely on machine-learning technology. From a report on VentureBeat: The company caused an uproar earlier this week when news emerged of the pending changes, which were due to take effect on January 23. Even if users were to opt out of allowing their information to be viewed by employees, the planned changes drew attention to the company's existing policy that permitted employees to look at users' content "for other reasons stated in our Privacy Policy," which included quite a few vague reasons, including "to maintain and improve the service." Evernote CEO Chris O'Neill issued an apology of sorts yesterday for the company's "poor communication" around the policy, and pointed out that users' information would be anonymized. But today the company has gone one step further by announcing that it's no longer implementing the planned changes in their current form
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A little late. (Score:5, Insightful)
I already deleted my account and uninstalled the apps.
Re:A little late. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto... once a company tries this, you can be sure they'll be back for mineable data sooner rather than later, with or without asking in a way that becomes public knowledge.
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Data miners are easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
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Ditto... once a company tries this, you can be sure they'll be back for mineable data sooner rather than later, with or without asking in a way that becomes public knowledge.
Almost every organisations do this. Some tell, most don't. Even when they don't, most organisations don't have the proper security procedures in place, and at least some employees can easily consult everything they want, for gossip or selling. Plus legal and illegal government access.
Privacy is very difficult to keep today (which sure has many negative consequences for everybody, even people who think they "have nothing to hide", or "don't care about been seen", or even "want to be seen").
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Yep, same here. I exported all my notes, deleted the notes, and deactivated the account for good.
If a company is forced to back off once, history shows that it only will be a matter of time before they find another way to get dibs on people's data, and likely in a way that won't cause people to raise a ruckus. Evernote should not have even tried this in the first place because people are sick and tired of the constant encroachment on privacy.
I hate mentioning Microsoft solution, but at least OneNote is de
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I hate mentioning Microsoft solution, but at least OneNote is decently secure, and one doesn't have to use a cloud provider to store the notes file. So far, it has been a suitable replacement.
Not true for MacOS. You can ONLY save to MS OneDrive, and the OneNote files seem to be hidden there, so forget about control over sharing with others.
In fact, the only reason I'm looking at EverNote now is to get around this restriction from Microsoft - the original "data spy" service.
A lot late (Score:1)
(Tries what, exactly?)
I really just don't understand how people like you are able to keep looking at the world that way. I get how someone can make that mistake when they're young, and I get how (if they're stupid) they might repeat it a few times. (I personally might be a little stupid, since I repeated it a few times.) But how someone
Re:A little late. (Score:4, Insightful)
I already deleted my account and uninstalled the apps.
I refused to install it in the first place.
Yes, it's convenient. Yes, it's popular.
But it keeps my data in places where I cannot control it. And no matter how innocuous my data might be, someone, somewhere, can probably find at least one way to use it for purposes I don't like.
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I already deleted my account and uninstalled the apps.
Hah I just write all my notes in pig latin.
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Re: A little late. (Score:1)
Want my grocery list? (Score:2)
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You grocery list clearly indicates you are a liberal commie socialist.
Sigh of ironic relief. (Score:1)
That's right, lets all breathe a sigh of relief. No changes will be made, to include any effort by users to actually secure the unecrypted notes at the heart of this "privacy" issue.
Users were actually in some kind of uproar about employees reading their cleartext data synced to the cloud...cue the irony.
Insincere (Score:1)
I can't believe this is a sincere change of heart and more of a business decision because of the negative press, like a child who apologizes for something just because their parent forces them to. Personally the damage is already done; I'm not using Evernote anymore, and the service was not unique nor vital to my life so it's a minor inconvenience at most.
They're not sorry they wanted to do it, they're sorry you found out. They haven't stopped wanting the data for whatever partner they plan to sell it to. E
I wish they would stop (Score:5, Insightful)
I like Evernote a lot. It's worked very well for me and the few problems I've had over the years were resolved relatively quickly by support.
That said, I think the software was finished a while ago. I wish they would stop adding new features, make the company way, way smaller, and just polish and refine the core product. Everything that isn't the core product should be moved to an extension. Lower the development and support costs enough that the company can be profitable by charging users $1 or $2 per month.
Evernote utility? (Score:3)
Played around with Evernote a few times but I've never been able to figure out how to integrate it into my workflow in a productive fashion. It just seems too clumsy to really be terribly useful. I can't really figure out a good way to use the service. Does anyone out there really find it terribly useful? If so for what?
Since I don't really use it right now I'm not worried about them looking at any non-existent data.
Re:Evernote utility? (Score:4, Interesting)
How I've used it has changed over time.
I think what makes it valuable to me is the search. I just throw everything in there and can usually find exactly what I need with search. The number of search operators is pretty amazing.
The second big win is their web clipper (or is it Clearly?). It does a really good job of grabbing web page contents and leaving behind the stuff I don't want (mostly ads). I can tag it and store it in Evernote and find it later. When I'm working on a big project, it's a nice way of keeping all of my notes together.
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The second big win is their web clipper (or is it Clearly?). It does a really good job of grabbing web page contents and leaving behind the stuff I don't want (mostly ads). I can tag it and store it in Evernote and find it later. When I'm working on a big project, it's a nice way of keeping all of my notes together.
So if you don't have a need to store content from web pages (I don't) it's more or less useless?
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Like I said, the great search is the number one reason I keep using it. I can throw just about any file in there and it seems to be able to index it. I will often take a snapshot of a whiteboard and store that in Evernote. It does an astonishingly good job of recognizing the handwritten text and so if I search for "object cache", I'm going to find web articles I've saved, source code snippets, pdfs from conferences, and snapshots of white boards.
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Yes, I used it in a slightly modified way that this series explains: http://www.thesecretweapon.org... [thesecretweapon.org]
It uses the Getting Things Done approach to productivity with a good way of integrating Evernote as the central brain. I stopped using Evernote when they restricted it to two devices. I've tried using OneNote as an alternative, but it's truly clumsy. Once you get used to Evernote, it feels fluid and everything else feels a bit off.
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Access to notes on any device is pretty nice plus. I can take notes on my highly portable Mac when on the go, and access them on my (windows) workstation when doing serious work, or on my less portable desktop replacement ( for when power > portability ) laptop on site, or on a tablet propped up against something when I am working in the lab. Note sharing between collaborators is also a small plus.
Notes are accessible on Windows / Mac / Android ( was / is internet required ) / iOS ( was / is internet req
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I don't mind seeing a company make a mistake and learn from it.
Not everyone sees the world as you do so missteps happen. They figured they had earned trust already and that the new tools they were going to offer would be worth the price of some privacy.
When they saw the reaction - or another viewpoint - they adapted instead of keeping their head in the sand. The fact that they communicated the change in the first place shows it was not some nefarious scheme.
Still trust the cloud with your data? (Score:2)
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We do for our sensitive data. We handle a LOT of sensitive private data in a jurisdiction with privacy laws. We need to know it's sitting in a jurisdiction with the same privacy laws and being able to see the servers helps us stay comfortable with that.
Min
Why your Legal department worries (Score:3)
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Google has been doing this for ages..
Yep, and Microsoft jumped in with both feet for Windows 10. So have people stopped using Google for web search, Gmail, Chrome, and Android?
In Their Current Form (Score:2)
Notice the sentence at the end of the summary..
"it's no longer implementing the planned changes in their current form."
It reads like they still want the changes, they're just trying to come up with a different way of accomplishing the same thing.
Too little too late (Score:2)
Nope. I'm already working on moving all of my notes out and closing my account. I'm encouraging others to do the same.
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Nope. I'm already working on moving all of my notes out and closing my account. I'm encouraging others to do the same.
What are you moving to?
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I'm a mac user so I've moved to Ulysses.
Color me shocked! (Score:2)