How to stop IFTTT from enabling the PublicURL of my notes

[wjmfx 0]

Hey folks,

I have setup IFTTT to add the title of my new notes to a Google Spreadsheet.

There is an IFTTT ingredient called "PublicURL" but I'm not using it. Sadly my notes still get their PublicURL enabled. I don't want this Public Link enabled.

Does anyone know how to stop IFTTT from enabling the PublicURL for my notes?

Thanks

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  Evernote notes default to being hidden behind the server's firewall,  and inaccessible to third party apps:  so for IFTTT to be able to link to them and copy the title I think they have to be public URLs.  You could raise this with IFTTT and Evernote support in case they have any way around the issue,  but I don't think there's an option.  Even though the notes are made public it's pretty unlikely that the content will be found - they'll be the very opposite of 'search engine optimised' - no incoming links,  no traffic - so even if indexed by a search engine they'll be in the low millions of suggested hits.  You'd need to send the URL to someone so they could find it.

If you do find out more on this,  please come back and tell us about it...

[wjmfx 0]

Hey gazumped,

Thanks for taking a dive in to this topic! I appreciate the help.

I actually had a similar theory and to test it out I configured Zapier to do the same thing. Zapier is not enabling the PublicURL of the notes. I've tried to dig in to the Zapier Zap to see if they're using the PublicURL and then turning it off, but I can't find anything to prove that.

Do you happen to know if there's somewhere to see the API calls to my Evernote account? Maybe I can see there what IFTTT is doing compared to Zapier.

I did contact Evernote support and they said it's up to IFTTT to handle the service. Trying to get a hold of IFTTT support is much harder.

I do know it'd be pretty difficult for someone to find the PublicURL of a note once enabled, but no matter how minuscule it is a security risk in my opinion.

Cheers.

[DTLow 5,736]

12 minutes ago, wjmfx said:

Do you happen to know if there's somewhere to see the API calls to my Evernote account? Maybe I can see there what IFTTT is doing compared to Zapier.

I don't think so, but I can check the note's  sharedate on my Mac to see when the public url was created

[shivaa95 0]

Hello, I don't think it's possible, I tried doing this for a friend and I couldn't.

TweakBox word counter Tutuapp

[Alex Che 0]

On 9/2/2019 at 12:56 PM, gazumped said:

so for IFTTT to be able to link to them and copy the title I think they have to be public URLs.

I grant permission for IFTTT application in Evernote specifically to access my notes. I'm not sure why the PublicURL trick is needed then.

This is a security issue IMO. I grant permission to IFTTT, but now if I accidentally leak my link to the web, anyone can see my content.

[wjmfx 0]

On 10/9/2019 at 5:15 AM, Alex Che said:

I grant permission for IFTTT application in Evernote specifically to access my notes. I'm not sure why the PublicURL trick is needed then.

This is a security issue IMO. I grant permission to IFTTT, but now if I accidentally leak my link to the web, anyone can see my content.

 

Thanks for continuing to bring commentary to this thread. It'd be great to hear from someone at Evernote or IFTTT.

Evernote support didn't offer much advice other than pointing out it would be hard for someone to find a shared note link.

IFTTT support did not reply to my submissions.

[gazumped 11,652]

10 hours ago, wjmfx said:

It'd be great to hear from someone at Evernote or IFTTT.

The way to get a response from Evernote is to contact Support,  as you already have.  Respond to their emails if you want more.  We're a mainly user-supported forum,  so no actual technical knowledge beyond our own experience.

[grberk 26]

I'm late chiming in here on this, but I didn't realize this thread existed until Evernote responded to my ticket on this very issue. Evernote says this is an IFTTT issue. I'm a paying premium member of IFTTT, so maybe (hopefully) I can get a response from IFTTT support on why their automation turns on the public URL, but doesn't bother to turn it off when the automation completes successfully. Turning my notes into public notes without any action on my part (or up until this point, my knowledge), is not cool. I'll report back if I can get someone to respond on this.

[gazumped 11,652]

Hmmn.  I had an issue where a large number of my notes showed as 'shared' that I really did NOT want to be shared and had certainly not chosen myself.  Evernote support suggested it might be an add-in,  but didn't mention any suspects,  and I hadn't thought of IFTTT 'till now, though I do have an account with them...  Hmmn...  😡

[wjmfx 0]

@grberk

I’m totally excited you’re also trying to figure it out. 
I tried to solve this with both Evernote Support and IFTTT Support a long time ago. 
Evernote said it was an IFTTT problem. IFTTT said it was an Evernote problem. 
Dead end. I gave up. 
I’m looking forward to hearing if you make progress. 

[gazumped 11,652]

4 hours ago, wjmfx said:

@grberk

I’m totally excited you’re also trying to figure it out. 
I tried to solve this with both Evernote Support and IFTTT Support a long time ago. 
Evernote said it was an IFTTT problem. IFTTT said it was an Evernote problem. 
Dead end. I gave up. 
I’m looking forward to hearing if you make progress. 

Last I heard,  Evernote were going to 'nuke' all my public-enabled shares - the share tokens,  not the notes! 

I keep a 'shared with others' Stack so any intentionally shared-out notes and notebooks can be reinstated manually - much more easily than trying to edit the 12,000-odd affected notes,  anyway! - but then I guess they got a little distracted with v10 issues so nothing has moved forward since.  

About 25% of my notes were affected.  I deactivated my IFTTT connection and nothing more has happened recently. 

Ironically,  since I mainly use 'old' Evernote,  it was v10 which showed me which notes had a public share link enabled - the share icon is much more visible in v10.  Some searches using sharedate:* -sharedate:<date> showed me when the majority  were set up - all more than a year ago now. 

Hopefully IFTTT and/ or Evernote have moved on enough that it won't recur.

I don't think there's a security issue - I've searched for some keywords without result,  and anyone who's not me magically obtaining a URL from one of my notes would only get view access anyway.

@Austin G was looking into my ticket #3274637 - maybe he'll be able to confirm if we're all looking at the same issue...

[PinkElephant 8,081]

@gazumped Hi, does this influence the use of postach.io as well ?

[grberk 26]

Just got a reply from IFTTT support just now:

Quote

Hi there, 

Thank you for reaching out and bringing this to our attention. I will check with the engineering team and see what if anything can be done about this for you. 

stay tuned. 

Hopefully they will have a fix.

[gazumped 11,652]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

@gazumped Hi, does this influence the use of postach.io as well ?

Don't think so - I still have that connection active, and none of the linked notes were in a blog notebook,  or created around the same time.

[grberk 26]

Got another update today from IFTTT:

Quote

 

Hi there,

Thanks for your patience. It looks like it should be possible for us to either stop enabling the shareable link altogether, or provide an option to disable it automatically once it's been used.

I can't provide further details as to how we'll go about implementing this just yet, but I'll keep you updated here once I hear more from the engineering team.

TTThanks,
Daniel from IFTTT