(Archived) (should be) FAQ: privacy and work data

[funkiestj 3]

I'm wondering about Evernote's privacy policy as viewed from a corporate perspective.

I'm new to evernote and am wondering if I should have work related information on Evernote. Is it evernote's goal that customers should feel save putting proprietary corporate information on evernote servers?

I didn't bother reading through the ToS and those are written in legalese, not human, and I am not a lawyer.

BTW, it looks like a cool program. I'll probably err on the side of not putting proprietary work related stuff on my evernote account.

[jbenson2 2,146]

You are correct. It is a cool program with over 3 million users.

But you are barking up the wrong tree when it comes to your own company's proprietary information.

You need to discuss this in detail with your MIS department head and then possibly with your legal department or CEO. My money is that they will not be willing to have the proprietary stuff outside of their own control. If by chance, they say OK, then ask for it in writing.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Is it evernote's goal that customers should feel save putting proprietary corporate information on evernote servers?

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=9448&p=36897&hilit=email+security#p36897

I agree with jbenson2. I'm guessing your company would not want proprietary info stored on EN unless it was encrypted. You can encrypt text only. Or, I think password protected PDFs are ok. (Password protected Word docs, Excel, etc, not so much. Easily hacked.) I prefer to not store sensitive data in Evernote simply b/c if I'm looking for something, I may have to look in one or two places. I don't really want to have to decrypt each document, so I utilize methods that make that process easier. They are not nearly as convenient as EN but I prefer to err on the side of caution.

[engberg 89]

I generally feel that anything I'd be willing to email to someone else on the Internet is appropriate for Evernote. We also have the ability to encrypt text in a note, which may make it useful for a few other things. But super-duper top-secret corporate recipes for English muffins (passed down from the company founder) may not be appropriate for a large-scale consumer Internet service, if the only alternative is a bank safe deposit vault.

[jefito 5,586]

But super-duper top-secret corporate recipes for English muffins (passed down from the company founder) may not be appropriate for a large-scale consumer Internet service, if the only alternative is a bank safe deposit vault.

Ha, I read that story this weekend, too. Evidently nothing's safe with people in the loop.

~Jeff

[jbenson2 2,146]

But super-duper top-secret corporate recipes for English muffins (passed down from the company founder) may not be appropriate for a large-scale consumer Internet service, if the only alternative is a bank safe deposit vault.

I wonder if Thomas' English muffins patented the "Nooks and Crannies" effect.

By the way, what is the deal with naming the parent company Bimbo Bakeries?

[funkiestj 3]

I generally feel that anything I'd be willing to email to someone else on the Internet is appropriate for Evernote. We also have the ability to encrypt text in a note, which may make it useful for a few other things. But super-duper top-secret corporate recipes for English muffins (passed down from the company founder) may not be appropriate for a large-scale consumer Internet service, if the only alternative is a bank safe deposit vault.

OK, so at this point you have so much on your plate that worrying about corporate policy paranoia is not on the radar. That is fine, I was just curious

Perhaps in the distant future (beyond the event horizon of your roadmap) you might sell evernote server appliances to corporations or sell a VPN protected service (i.e. corporation pays you to host a private, segregated evernote server) that IT folks at ACME corp can feel safe about using.

[engberg 89]

Yeah, we did the enterprise software sales thing at our last company, and it's interesting how different it is from mass-market consumer Internet services like Evernote. You end up needing to have sales people flying around on commission with sales engineers going on site to do installs and whatnot. I.e. it's tough to do that well in the same company that does a consumer service like ours.

[jefito 5,586]

Amen to that -- we have a sort of split corporate personality, consumer vs. professional, and it's a real balancing act to service both. Developers can flow from hot project to hot project (little customer visibility), but the sale & support staff have to stay pretty much constant, and all the while we have to be vigilant about not cannibalizing sales in one or the other group.

Jeff

[awolfe_ii 0]

Yeah, we did the enterprise software sales thing at our last company, and it's interesting how different it is from mass-market consumer Internet services like Evernote. You end up needing to have sales people flying around on commission with sales engineers going on site to do installs and whatnot. I.e. it's tough to do that well in the same company that does a consumer service like ours.

Let me add +1 to the appliance idea.

Stick it on a virtual machine image and sell it.

Please!

[engberg 89]

We don't plan to ever try to sell Evernote "appliances" ... we're a cloud-based service company.