private work/tax/medical/financial notes -- aren't these a lot less secure without Legacy local notebooks?

[BummedJim 6]

Ever since Evernote went to v. 10 and kicked local-only notebook storage to the curb I've been continuing as a paid subscriber, which I've been for over a decade, specifically to use Legacy and continue with that level of local-only security as long as I can. Yet I rarely if ever see this topic brought up anymore in the forums, just people saying Legacy is "over.” 

 

Ok, over means over, but what am I supposed to do with whole notebooks that I really cannot put up on the web, when now there's only character-by-character password encryption to keep them from prying eyes around the world and with Evernote itself even having its share of security breaches over the years. This goes beyond a personal preference -- it's essential for work requirements as well as personal security for Evernote notebooks with sensitive work, tax, medical, and finance-related records, various personal account and password reminders, etc. etc. Many must not leave my laptop, local backup drives or workplace-controlled storage servers, period.

 

I understand that Evernote will never bring private local notebooks back, much as I hate that. At least some competitors with offline capability can import its .enex notebooks, but any that I can find either don't have offline-only options, use a cumbersome markup language instead of wysiwyg, can’t easily shortcut from one note to another within a note itself, or have other big inconveniences compared with Legacy. Every one of those is a core feature for me. I for one would be thrilled even to see a spinoff Evernote-owned product that could handle notebooks like this even without any kind of cloud capability, but that’s not even on the horizon is it.

 

I’m not unwilling to subscribe to a competitor, just as I do with Evernote, but the feature set here is unmatched. I know I'm on borrowed time. Can mine really be the 'fringe' use-case that everyone here - users and evernote employees alike - insists that it is? It's hell to be an orphan. Any suggestions?

[PinkElephant 8,159]

https://evernote.com/security

 

I would enable 2FA to create an additional access layer, on top of a unique & strong password.

[BummedJim 6]

Thanks Pink Elephant, but no. I've read that /security link dozens of times over the course of months at least. Not gonna cut it for the needs I mentioned, particularly work-related. Again, how can this possibly be a fringe use-case?

Best,

Jim

[PinkElephant 8,159]

Accept it as it is, or export your notes to a local file system.

If on a Mac there would be a self hosted alternative. For Windows, no idea.

[BummedJim 6]

Thanks again PinkElephant. I am on a mac. What would you suggest for self-hosted?

Jim

[CalS 5,281]

1 hour ago, BummedJim said:

Ok, over means over, but what am I supposed to do with whole notebooks that I really cannot put up on the web,

When local notebooks were kicked to the curb I opted out of EN, back in late 2021.  Windows solution for ideas.

1. I exported all my notes (56k of which 9k were local) using the HTML option.  All attachments get exported in this fashion and tags are maintained in the HTML.  I created a simple folder structure on my C Drive to hold my EN data and new data (mostly PDFs).
2. I use Mega as a cloud service for backup and syncing across devices.  Mega has end to end encryption so only I have the key and my data is a blob on Mega servers.  I can only search titles on mobile but this is not a negative for me.
3. I use Windows indexing on the Mega folders which provides remarkably fast search times, mostly as quick as I type.
4. Didn't have to, but I bought a license to Directory Opus which provides an EN like interface to search my repository of 27 GB.  Plus some great file management tools.

This has worked for me as major part of my EN use case was paperless.  I've added 5500 "notes" since I switched.  The notetaking and task stuff I now do with Workflowy.  YMMV.

[BummedJim 6]

Thanks CalS (and again to PinkElephant) for fast and informative replies. Those sound like good leads. More than likely I'll just bite the bullet and switch over to OneNote. My university employer pushed everyone over to OneDrive-Sharepoint a few months back, so I won't feel quite so out on a limb going their way. It remains to be seen whether onenote itself is seamless on mac -- I've had bad experiences already with sharepoint that way.

Jim

 

[CalS 5,281]

9 minutes ago, BummedJim said:

Thanks CalS (and again to PinkElephant) for fast and informative replies. Those sound like good leads. More than likely I'll just bite the bullet and switch over to OneNote. My university employer pushed everyone over to OneDrive-Sharepoint a few months back, so I won't feel quite so out on a limb going their way. It remains to be seen whether onenote itself is seamless on mac -- I've had bad experiences already with sharepoint that way.

Jim

Not sure OneNote is going to be any better than EN at keeping your notes "from prying eyes around the world".  If that is a major concern.

Good luck in any case.

[BummedJim 6]

Right you are, CalS -- beyond personal needs I'm looking at web-accessible server-side storage no matter what. The difference for me is institutional -- if something went wrong they'd be at least partially blame-able and responsible for the fix. Otherwise they might just say "Ever-what?" Our IT's simply going to trust MS more, since it's their tech and they've locked the whole campus into the borg with enterprise-level service. They've even pushed us off anything google. We're talking student privacy laws, research anonymity, federal project sponsors, etc. -- with much pre-upload protection as we can, but dataset's always in flux. Like in the old days, 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM' :-(.

Jim

[PinkElephant 8,159]

1 hour ago, BummedJim said:

Thanks again PinkElephant. I am on a mac. What would you suggest for self-hosted?

Jim

DEVONThink 

[bmcl26 496]

Store them in a Note as PDFs and password-protect them.

 

[CalS 5,281]

2 minutes ago, bmcl26 said:

Store them in a Note as PDFs and password-protect them.

 

Can't search contents then.

[BummedJim 6]

Ah, I see what you mean, Pink Elephant -- MacOS's own Notes app. I'm on an employer-configured Mac, and I hadn't realized it could both import .enex notebooks and save them local-only. Sounds like my personal notes are going there, and my work notes onto the university-secured OneDrive/Sharepoint system.

Jim

[bmcl26 496]

1 minute ago, CalS said:

Can't search contents then.

Works fo me, I include keywords in the host note that are not sensitive. Not Ideal but,  I manage to find what I need.

[PinkElephant 8,159]

No, this has nothing to do with any Apple own Notes app:

https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink

It is build by a small team, it is hosted entirely on a Mac, and it is quite powerful. Purchased software. iCloud is only used for the databases (= notebook / stack) you decide to sync, and only to allow access for mobile devices.

On the downside, it will require significant learning and setup. Mac and iOS only.

[CalS 5,281]

@bmcl26Yeah, I do title searches on mobile which is fine for what I do on mobile.  But sometimes I want to get at the file contents when on my desktop.  And that needs a contents index.  🤷‍♂️

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, BummedJim said:

I am on a mac. What would you suggest for self-hosted? (Legacy Local Notebooks)

I converted from Evernote Legacy to Devonthink    
It has no web client; all the data is local but syncs between my devices

[BummedJim 6]

Meant to mark both PinkElephant's and CalS's replies as winners, but realized after clicking I could just choose one ;-). I do need an easy-to-edit format. I'm forever resurrecting and adding to my evernotes and linking across them, because so much of my work involves tinkering with novel kinds of research data organization. bmcl, your solution does sound right for a good many use cases, but rather awkward and limited for my own.

[bmcl26 496]

10 hours ago, CalS said:

@bmcl26Yeah, I do title searches on mobile which is fine for what I do on mobile.  But sometimes I want to get at the file contents when on my desktop.  And that needs a contents index.  🤷‍♂️

As I said, it works for me; I always find the relative note that I need. I am aware it will not be a solution for everyone.  Even back in the days when I used Legacy, I had no requirement for local notes.

[PinkElephant 8,159]

2 things to mention:

1) Who is working under GDPR rules (European users) and wants to use EN professionally should sign a Data Processing Agreement with EN. It is available without any problem through support, a standard document.

Then mention EN among the services you use in the data protection declaration on your website. This builds the legal foundation of using services professionally in the EU - not only EN, and shields against legal action.

The account should then employ 2FA as „State of the Art“ in access security.

2) EN says of themselves that the service is not HIPAA-compliant. That’s the US rules for medical documents for OTHERS. So the own documentation can be stored, but no professional use for patients data is allowed if you are in a medical profession. I think many lawyers in the US follow the same rules, don’t know if by law or by best practice.

[BummedJim 6]

Thanks for the additional info, PinkElephant. It will be useful not just for me but for others reading this thread now or later. There's no HIPAA data in our own situation, but our classroom education research with children does fall under U.S. FERPA and other data protection laws. Industry-standard AES-256 encryption, as offered by Evernote and any legit cloud storage provider, is plenty good for that purpose, legally speaking, so long as the data's been rendered unidentifiable. In our own case, university policy and best practices require that anything with identifiable research data needs to stay off the web altogether. That kind of data gets stored only on a university-protected smb server that can only be mounted using their own vpn and login credentials. Any other kind of data release would be inadvertent on my part and quickly rectified, but still Evernote's having done away with private folders is a real drawback that has me scrambling for alternatives beyond what EN can offer. So while I understand that I could put some of my employer's rather sensitive data, as well as my own personal data, in the cloud, it's still frustrating that EN and its competitors in the notes-management space now deem that we must. It's a loss.

Now that I've started digging into it, MacOS's Apple Notes app does look fairly close to what I need for personal notes that can stay only on my own Macbook, without needing to upload to their iCloud. If only it would let me copy and use note links from one note to another as EN does. For what it may be worth, I did read last night that the just-announced (June 2023) developer beta for Mac's upcoming OS Sonoma is finally putting something like that capability into Notes, but an unsupported beta's a little too edgy for me. At any rate I do also feel uncomfortable putting the various kinds of personal data in my subject line onto EN's servers, or anywhere else in the cloud. I can't imagine I'm the only Evernote user who feels this way; it's a shame that neither EN nor any other vendor makes this possible anymore. Just last night I uploaded some of my EN notebooks from Legacy, with several thousand notes apiece, to Apple Notes using Evernote's .enex format. That's quick and seamless, and the Notes interface is quite similar to EN's.

For anyone else on a Mac who feels like Apple Notes might fit some of their needs for offline notes management, this article from December 2022 describes the capability: https://appletoolbox.com/how-to-store-apple-notes-locally/ . And this article from June 2023 describes the extent to which Notes should improve under Sonoma, when that ships around October -- https://appleinsider.com/inside/macos-sonoma/tips/how-to-link-two-or-more-apple-notes-in-macos-sonoma . That's still not the kind of note-to-note connecting that Evernote's offered since forever, though. YMMV.

I wouldn't give up Evernote myself for less sensitive uses -- EN has for years let me think with my fingertips, to the tune of half a dozen notes a day, and always with the ability to make connections across my notes past, present and future. I'm searching several times a day across my notes space for things I figured out how to do years ago and promptly put aside, and using those as a jumping-off point for solving new problems. This in turn lets me add those new notes' links into the old notes, keeping the wheels turning. I'm relieved at least to see that Apple continues to recognize the need for truly local notes management of this complexity and remains committed to supporting it in their limited way.

Long live Evernote Legacy, or at least as long as possible.

[PinkElephant 8,159]

It’s pretty easy in Apple Notes to store locally. Just remember however, that it may be part of the iCloud Backup when you decide to create such a backup - which is highly recommended, since it is the regular backup method on iOS.

On the Mac you can run TimeMachine locally.

[BummedJim 6]

Thanks PinkElephant. I'm also seeing that it's evidently a one-way trip from Evernote to Apple Notes, other than some rather hackish AppleScript. Apple Notes has nothing like the .enex format to bring entire notebooks, or folders, back into Evernote -- walled garden territory. Beyond that I can find nothing but note-by-note PDF transfer, not at all what I need unfortunately. So I'll keep working the heck out of Legacy as long as I can. That aside, starting now and likely long term  I'll be moving my EN notebooks with highly personal information over to Notes, while keeping my workhorse notebooks that need best organization on Evernote. Different purposes, different tools -- the best of all possible worlds I guess. Thanks everyone for helping me think this through.