(Archived) Help! The Feds Have Blocked Evernote!

[Filibogado 0]

I work at the headquarters office of a large cabinet-level federal agency in Washington DC. One morning, I typed "www.evernote.com" into my browser and lo and behold, the following message popped up:

ACCESS DENIED

POLICY DENIED BLACK LIST

At the same time, my office version of Evernote is no longer able to sync, displaying the message "SYNCHRONIZATION FAILED" continuously.

As a premium subscriber, I am starting to panic as I have thousands of notes that have suddenly been stuck on my office PC with no way of synching them with my home files. I was hoping the Evernote USB portable version is still available but alas, it no longer is. I hope Evernote can help us. There are over 2 million federal workers in the country and it is a heck of a market segment to lose if the word :"Evernote" is banned even in Google searches and on url pages.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Fil

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

If you have a pc at home, just copy your exb file to a thumb drive, take it home & follow instructions for restoring from a Windows backup. Please search the board on the topic of restoring, should you need more info.

[heather 604]

Copy your .exb file to a usb drive and you'll be able to access those notes from your desktop at home.

[jefito 5,586]

Not a bad bet that USB drives are going to be locked down as well...

[martyscholes 23]

I am kind of surprised that this had not happened previously.

I work at a large bank. My desktop PC has all ports (USB and all others) blocked as does my laptop. All email in and out are scanned. Evernote, as well as many other sites, is blacklisted. At the corporate office, WiFi is encrypted and all MAC addresses must be whitelisted through an approval process. The corporate WiFi doesn't even attach to the local LAN -- it sits outside the firewall. All LAN ports are blocked until freed only by previous request with sufficient paperwork having business justification and approval. Trying to use any hardware not previously authorized on the corporate network is grounds for immediate dismissal. Plugging a personal device into the LAN can result in an immediate dismissal. Attempting to attach a personal device to WiFi can result in immediate dismissal. Installing any software on a corporate PC can result in immediate dismissal. Circumventing the network blacklist by using a proxy server will result in immediate dismissal. Changing a MAC address to allow network access will result in immediate dismissal. Installing software on one's Blackberry can result in immediate dismissal.

Having lived this way for almost six years, I am frankly stunned that federal agencies were lax enough to allow Evernote on the agency hardware and allowed synchronizing with home computers.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

Having lived this way for almost six years, I am frankly stunned that federal agencies were lax enough to allow Evernote on the agency hardware and allowed synchronizing with home computers.

Having some experience with federal agencies, nothing surprises me anymore. The bizarre rules (only plastic knives with your lunches!), antiquated equipment, and no access to personal email (at some places) just makes me think they are working in another world. Until Evernote becomes a hopelessly bloated, less user friendly, and much slower product (let's hope that never happens!), I doubt it will be common to see it on government equipment.

[gazumped 9,549]

I worked on a government site for a while, and the level of IT security was (of course) significant - no unauthorised hardware, software, internet or network connections. Everything was locked down and (mostly) encrypted. Work laptops were strictly controlled, and plugging in a thumb drive popped up a warning if that drive wasn't work-encrypted. Quite a few individuals tested the system in one way or another, sometimes inadvertently - and they don't work there any more.

Evernote would never have gotten through the door (sorry guys) and if it had, syncing wouldn't have made it through the firewall. It was reassuring from a civilian point of view to see how seriously everyone took data security, and deeply, fundamentally frustrating to have to use old and squeaky software. Unfortunately them were the rules.

If the EXB file to USB stick trick works, I'd take your data and run. Once you've deleted the installation from your PC, maybe you could try 'official channels' and make a case for allowing access to the web for syncing - but bear in mind that's a gaping security hole. All you would have to do to steal the secret plans is paste the file to a note and allow your work client to sync. Mata Hari can then log into your account from abroad somewhere and open the file on her secret laptop...

[C6REW 416]

Am I missing something here?

Why can't you log in at home, using the same name and password as you did at work? You can then do your copying, sharing etc.

I guess you would have thought of this and already discovered that you cannot do it. But no harm in suggesting!

Best regards

Chris

[cwb 225]

I'm just as confused Chris.

after logging in at home, the only missing data would be the content added after the firewall block went into effect.

[Billy Bob 0]

At DOD they do have have not prohibited personal laptops and mobile hotspots. I email myself documents to my EN email from work and email EN notes from home to work so I can access them. Cumbersome work around. Back and forth, back and forth. Considering you can email pretty big files seems like a lot of this security stuff is more fluff than substance. Until they block email attachments somehow. Have been hoping there is some online storage cloud thing they have not thought to block but haven't found it yet. Cost of the lost productivity is astrononical.

[gazumped 9,549]

As I said earlier I worked on a (HM) government contract for a while, and although the security precautions were frequently seriously detrimental to getting things done via the latest software, they were also very seriously detrimental to continued employment if ignored or shaved too closely - even if that meant things had been done faster for a while.

I think the rules were obeyed and grey areas referred upwards for clarification rather than exploited heavily though, because colleagues recognised that being insecure meant risking that public data would be lost or compromised. The security guys would allow special software where they could, and although there were complaints about restrictions (there are always complaints about restrictions) no-one set out to look for or exploit loopholes.

One purpose of government seems to be to find the slowest and most expensive way to do things - and then make it slower. If you work in the field, you learn to cope, or you look for another career...