Evernote progress reports - how to disable monitoring?

[AndyOfLinux 3]

Evernote is sending monthly "Progress Report from Evernote" that shows stats for notes created, days used, tasks completed, etc.  When and HOW did I approve Evernote's monitoring of my activities?  HOW DO I DISABLE MONITORING?

UPDATE: 4 Aug 2022 - as I've mentioned in some comments below, I DID agree to having this data monitored (and by inference reported on - to me) in the user's agreement.  One should always read the fine print, so to speak - lol! My bad for "complaining."

Edited August 4, 2022 by AndyOfLinux
update for additional info

[wahi 0]

Same question!  

 

[PinkElephant 6,222]

On which OS and client are you ?

Release software or beta ?

[wahi 0]

Mac OS Monterey 12.3.1

Evernote:

[AndyOfLinux 3]

7 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

On which OS and client are you ?

Release software or beta ?

10.33.4-mac-mas-public (459002)
Editor: v144.0.17818
Service: v1.49.2
© 2019 - 2022 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

[agsteele 2,353]

I've never seen such Emails. This is very curious. Of course the sort of data you describe are eminently collectable.

What is the Email address that is sending you the report? Is there an unsubscribe option?

[AndyOfLinux 3]

9 minutes ago, agsteele said:

I've never seen such Emails. This is very curious. Of course the sort of data you describe are eminently collectable.

What is the Email address that is sending you the report? Is there an unsubscribe option?

Email (seems monthly) is coming from: team@comms.evernote.com. BUT, the point I'm making is that I do NOT want Evernote monitoring my usage, in any fashion.  This is a privacy concern! I believe WE should have control of all personal usage info 

[wahi 0]

Indeed, the message with their monitoring statistics is coming to the email registered in my account.  There is an unsubscribe option at the bottom of he email.  However that only means I won't see what monitoring statistics they are collecting routinely.   Disconcerting!!  

[Boot17 873]

39 minutes ago, agsteele said:

I've never seen such Emails.

I hadn't either until I went and checked my inbox and saw one just now from an hour ago. I believe it's the first one that I have ever received.

1 hour ago, AndyOfLinux said:

 HOW DO I DISABLE MONITORING?

I'm not sure what the best way is, but a for-sure way would be to unsubscribe... Not from the emails, but from the Evernote service altogether

I'll bet every cloud service we use does some kind of monitoring, we just generally aren't alerted to that fact. Reminds me of "If a tree falls in a forest, does it still make a sound?" and in this case... "If a user doesn't get a stats email, is there still monitoring going on?"

[Boot17 873]

Email looks like this:

[scojjac 58]

I agree with @Boot17 (thanks for the screenshot, by the way). You might be able to turn off the emails in your account settings on the web, but you should expect that an online service like Evernote is keeping track of product usage details. For example, your email provider most certainly knows how many emails you send and receive daily, when you last checked for messages, and more. 

[agsteele 2,353]

Yes, I just received this as well. Looks like a new 'feature'. The data is all stuff that I'd expect to be available routinely.

[agsteele 2,353]

58 minutes ago, AndyOfLinux said:

Email (seems monthly) is coming from: team@comms.evernote.com. BUT, the point I'm making is that I do NOT want Evernote monitoring my usage, in any fashion.  This is a privacy concern! I believe WE should have control of all personal usage info 

I understand. I was wanting to check that this reporting and data gathering wasn't being done by an external service.

I think your only way out of the service provider not capturing your use data would be to cancel the service. Chances are that any alternative cloud based notes app will do the same thing.

The Evernote privacy policy clearly says that they capture the types of data reported to me today. 

https://evernote.com/privacy/policy

I signed up to this so I know my options.

 

 

[AndyOfLinux 3]

4 minutes ago, agsteele said:

The Evernote privacy policy clearly says that they capture the types of data reported to me today. 

https://evernote.com/privacy/policy

I signed up to this so I know my options.

 

 

Valid point about Evernote's privacy policy...  as always, I should have read the fine print.  I'll need to consider what is acceptable to me and do a review of options

[Frki2 74]

I saw this first time and for me it was actualy cool, but i like this kind of statistics, to see quickly.

You have something similar to this in O365 ( i think viva statistics ) where you see similar things like that.

 

[PinkElephant 6,222]

I never see one of these ☹️

But probably it is because my internet reflex tells me to refuse, reject and turn it off wherever one of these buttons crosses my view.

It is enough for me that my Apple watch tries to convince me to do THAT extra step every day 🥵

[drex 0]

I saw this today for the first time as well. I wrote an email reply - which BOUNCED as undeliverable. Nice job guys! 

Anyway - here is the email I sent:

Are you kidding me??

My using Evernote is NOT a game. I have no interest in you following my activity on your platform in any way. In fact, I find this incredibly intrusive and I am going to start looking for alternatives. Have you been doing this for long? I fished this message out of my spam - this is absolutely appalling for a paid business service. I do not need your encouragement or praise or anything other than to make a product that works. The changes you have made over the years have made the experience worse, but I have felt locked in because of the volume of notes I have and the pain it would be to move. This is big encouragement to leave.  

#####

I see that the privacy policy does cover this - but EVERY SaaS service has to be able to look at your data in order to run the service. Anything that looks like actual content observation or monitoring is simply wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

[gazumped 10,334]

Like someone said - where's the fire?  I get stats from Kindle on how many days continuous reading I've been doing,  similar from Workflowy on what additions and edits have been made to my account,  Microsoft phones home regularly to tell ET what services I use,  my Browser tells me how many ads it killed for me,  my AV pops up and tells me how many million viruses it  saved me from... 

EVERY online service collects anonymised stats on what resources its users consume and (sigh) some Marketing genius thinks that users will be impressed if they see individually how much they've used the features.  Evernote have previously commented that things like the mapping service got cancelled because "only a small number of customers ever used it".

Evernote claimed a while ago to be the single largest repository of stored data (maybe that was 'personal data?) and are probably Google's biggest client.  As part of maintaining  their services in and in sheer commercial self-protection they're going to want to know whether the number of users / volume of uploads etc changes*. If you don't want the information,  just unsubscribe - from the emails.

Pointless to move to another provider because they'll be doing exactly the same,  whether they spell it out to you or not.

 

 

[PinkElephant 6,222]

Who believes any cloud service would not keep extensive records is naive. EN does not trade with the data of its users. 

The fact that EN feeds it back to it users is a sign of openness. It is never a breach of privacy to tell the user himself his statistics.

No smoke, no fire in sight !

[Rami_Halawa 5]

I received this email for the first time this morning, and I liked it ... I don't see where is the problem .... Monitoring activities (and not the content) could be very useful to develop the software .... As mentioned above, all service providers monitors their users activities. Todoist, for example, sends an annual report of all activities throughout the year, and people love it ....

[SB3D 2]

Yes it's CREEPY! What else do they learn (and sell?) while observing us?

[PinkElephant 6,222]

They sell nothing (except a subscription to you). They don't observe you (unless you are afraid of an algorithm that communicates your own activities back to you).

They will for sure collect general use data of how, when and how the app is used - not for individuals, but for all users. This is standard and necessary to adapt and improve the service.

If you don't like it, contact support.

If you still don't like it, quit.

And nothing is creepy, except you don't like yourself what you do on the EN platform. Then the prime question is why you continue.

[agsteele 2,353]

And as noted previously in this thread, this data is exactly what we signed up to when we agreed to the privacy policy when we registered.

So take a look at the privacy policy to know what is collected and how it is used. If you don't want the Email there is an unsubscribe link.

Otherwise, I don't see the privacy policy being amended. So the only option is to leave Evernote for another service. But they will likely collect similar data in a similar manner.

[PinkElephant 6,222]

The „privacy“ is never an issue when an automatic process informs a person about the activities of exactly this person.

Except you feel a wave of split personality, that is …

[WilliamL 450]

Sigh. Are people really that stupid that they are complaining an auto stat is spying? That’s less sensible than buying into flat earth. I’m too tired for this today. 

It’s a stat - if it gets you that stressed you are BLESSED cause for most of us it’s either a curiosity or a swipe delete because we have actual things we need to focus on and resolve. 

[bmcl26 269]

Receive this the past two months, no problem for me.

[Rami_Halawa 5]

I would actually love to receive such emails in a note format, so we can save it in Evernote, and monitor trends .... just an idea !

[gazumped 10,334]

5 minutes ago, Rami_Halawa said:

I would actually love to receive such emails in a note format, so we can save it in Evernote, and monitor trends .... just an idea !

Hi.  I barely noticed the last one I got,  but I think this is a pop-up window,  not an email.  Even if it were,  email > Evernote account is an easy copy/ paste for a free acount,  or just a matter of forwarding to your Evernote address for subscribers.  If it is a pop-up,  screenshots are good...

[Mike P 2,092]

1 hour ago, Rami_Halawa said:

and monitor trends

Apparently I have been super productive by arranging for July to have an extra day compared to June!

[WilliamL 450]

1 hour ago, Mike P said:

Apparently I have been super productive by arranging for July to have an extra day compared to June!

Congrats! Now, if you could deploy those powers to get me a few hours extra sleep each day that would be much appreciated. 
 

Cant wait for the leap year level productivity 😂

[PinkElephant 6,222]

2 hours ago, Mike P said:

Apparently I have been super productive by arranging for July to have an extra day compared to June!

They just want to communicate in a positive way that your output has sucked recently. So they had to add another day to July to make ends meet … 😱🤣

Edited August 5, 2022 by PinkElephant