(Archived) Basic Questions About Evernote 3

[hschwartz 0]

My experience with Evernote 3 has been good so far. I'm impressed with the new synchronization system. I'm also pleased that EN 3 and EN 2.2 seem to stay out of each other's way. But I have some basic questions:

1) When I make an addition or change to the Evernote 3 database, am I making that change to the online database, which then synchs those changes to other computers?

2) Does EN 3 keep a copy of its database on the individual computers? This is important, in the event the online server goes down. I assume it must, since EN 3 continues to work when offline. It's also safer to have a copy on the individual computers as backups.

3) Just how safe is our data on a server system? Can a hacker get to it? Can anyone who figures out our password break in? Which of the two versions is safer to store our precious data?

Thanks for considering these questions.

[iafanasyev 1]

1) When I make an addition or change to the Evernote 3 database, am I making that change to the online database, which then synchs those changes to other computers?

If you are working on notes in the private or published notebooks, changes are done to the local replica of your data first, then go to the server on sync, then the changes propagate to other clients (computers) when they in their turn sync with the service. There are also 'local' notebooks which never get synced to the servier and love on one particular client only. When you are creating a new notebook, you can choose its type.

2) Does EN 3 keep a copy of its database on the individual computers? This is important, in the event the online server goes down. I assume it must, since EN 3 continues to work when offline. It's also safer to have a copy on the individual computers as backups.

Yes, absloutely. You can fully work with your data while being offline. You can backup the local note storage files with any backup software you like.

3) Just how safe is our data on a server system? Can a hacker get to it? Can anyone who figures out our password break in? Which of the two versions is safer to store our precious data?

There is a very thorough post on this topic by Dave Engberg somewhere on the forum. In short: we try to protect your data in all possible ways. If you have very sensitive data like credit card PINs and alike, you can (and, probably, should) encrypt that portions of note content (there is a correponding option in Windows client, other clients to follow), so nobody can read these encrypted snippets unless he knows the password (and this password is not stored anywhere along with the note data).