Evernote just became useless to me

[willoh 6]

One of my main uses of EN is to use the web clipper to save all my paperless statements in a private notebook stack. Right click/add to evernote/clip this page and bam! a new EN note opens, I select private notebook stack, close it and I am done. Well, not anymore. Now the note syncs immediately, which means all the sensitive data goes on the cloud first and only after that I can select private. Which kills EN for me. Tech support states that the new clipper no longer has the feature I was using all along, but I find it hard to believe. Maybe one of you can shed light on this or show me an alternative way that does not involve 15 steps. Or suggest the best and safest way to store sensitive data. PS: this started happening after my laptop went nuts and I had to re-download the evernote web clipper. Thank you in advance for your advice!

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi - you don't mention which OS or Evernote client you're using.  There's (currently) no option for either the web Clipper or Clearly to send clips to your desktop database only;  about the only way to get your statements onto your desktop is to download the file.  All my statements come with various options for file types to download.  Save those files to your desktop and (Windows again) use an Import Folder to suck them all into your local notebook,  or (Mac) use one of the options you can find in the forums.  Search on "input folder".

 

Hope that helps..

[tavor 668]

I agree that the ability to clip directly to a local notebook would be useful.

[willoh 6]

Thanks Gazumped, I am using Mozilla. Say I just made an online payment, I would immediately clip in in a private EN stack. Now I have to use some other clipping tool, save it to desktop and drag it in EN. Then why do I even need EN? I don't store 500 recipes or clip 20 barbecue grill options which is what EN seems to be geared toward lately. I was using EN to make my life easier by centralizing all important data, by immediately clipping it to private stack, or making it paperless by scanning it to private stack EN with a Fuji Scansnap. And to take non sensitive notes on my phone/pc and enjoy the convenience of syncing. I am a premium user because EN made my life so much more organized so I felt that they deserve it. It is frustrating that now I have to look for a different app because some moron decided to eliminate one of the core functions of EN. I hope they read this

.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Thanks Gazumped, I am using Mozilla. Say I just made an online payment, I would immediately clip in in a private EN stack. Now I have to use some other clipping tool, save it to desktop and drag it in EN. Then why do I even need EN? I don't store 500 recipes or clip 20 barbecue grill options which is what EN seems to be geared toward lately. I was using EN to make my life easier by centralizing all important data, by immediately clipping it to private stack, or making it paperless by scanning it to private stack EN with a Fuji Scansnap. And to take non sensitive notes on my phone/pc and enjoy the convenience of syncing. I am a premium user because EN made my life so much more organized so I felt that they deserve it. It is frustrating that now I have to look for a different app because some moron decided to eliminate one of the core functions of EN. I hope they read this

.

 

The FF clipper can send directly to your desktop client.  You can set this in the clipper settings. You can then move the note to a local notebook, before your next sync, if it's not offered. 

 

As far as what you'd need EN for if you use a third party screen capture, EN is not just for local information.  A lot of people store a lot of (non sensitive) information in the EN cloud.

 

You can also screen cap directly to the clipboard & could then paste this to a new note in your local notebook.

[tavor 668]

 

Thanks Gazumped, I am using Mozilla. Say I just made an online payment, I would immediately clip in in a private EN stack. Now I have to use some other clipping tool, save it to desktop and drag it in EN. Then why do I even need EN? I don't store 500 recipes or clip 20 barbecue grill options which is what EN seems to be geared toward lately. I was using EN to make my life easier by centralizing all important data, by immediately clipping it to private stack, or making it paperless by scanning it to private stack EN with a Fuji Scansnap. And to take non sensitive notes on my phone/pc and enjoy the convenience of syncing. I am a premium user because EN made my life so much more organized so I felt that they deserve it. It is frustrating that now I have to look for a different app because some moron decided to eliminate one of the core functions of EN. I hope they read this

.

 

The FF clipper can send directly to your desktop client.  You can set this in the clipper settings. You can then move the note to a local notebook, before your next sync, if it's not offered. 

 

Just checked Clipper settings in Chrome. No option to send directly to desktop client. Seems you have to send the clipping to one of the synced notebooks.

[willoh 6]

Thanks for your suggestions. I checked the FF clipper settings and it has no setting for sending to desktop. It just sends directly to cloud (I had to sync my desktop EN to see the page I clipped). That's what created the problem to begin with.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

The FF clipper can send directly to your desktop client.  You can set this in the clipper settings. You can then move the note to a local notebook, before your next sync, if it's not offered.

Just checked Clipper settings in Chrome. No option to send directly to desktop client. Seems you have to send the clipping to one of the synced notebooks.

OP said he is using Mozilla.

 

Thanks for your suggestions. I checked the FF clipper settings and it has no setting for sending to desktop. It just sends directly to cloud (I had to sync my desktop EN to see the page I clipped). That's what created the problem to begin with.

I beg to differ. And I just sent a clip from FF directly to my desktop client.

[willoh 6]

Thank you so much! I was looking for private settings directly in the elephant button (I even tried setting up a private inbox and tried clipping to, it didn't work) and then I found the setting you screencapped, in the add-ons section of FF. As I mentioned in the initial post, customer service stated that the feature is no longer available, which shows how well they know the product

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You're welcome.

[tavor 668]

 

 

The FF clipper can send directly to your desktop client.  You can set this in the clipper settings. You can then move the note to a local notebook, before your next sync, if it's not offered.

Just checked Clipper settings in Chrome. No option to send directly to desktop client. Seems you have to send the clipping to one of the synced notebooks.

 

OP said he is using Mozilla.

 

Sure. I was just observing that it seems no such setting is available in Chrome so that perhaps an EN employee would take note.

 

Since the setting is available in FF, hopefully it will come to Chrome relatively soon.

[jbignert 473]

Clipping to desktop clients is currently supported in Firefox & IE Web Clipper. We have no plans at the moment to bring this to Chrome and Safari. 

[gazumped 11,652]

Aaargh!  Now I'm torn.  Chrome clipper has all its nice bells and whistles,  but clipping from a web page and wanting to add some comments,  I need to clip,  sync,  ...wait... then edit.  Firefox lets me clip and open the note immediately!

 

Feature request: parity between clipper versions please jb!!

[eric_sh 1]

Please please consider bringing this feature to Safari's web clipper!  I want to use EN to clip internal corporate info directly to a local notebook.  Corporate policy forbids use of any third party cloud tool for (even temporarily) storing corporate information, so clipping to an online notebook and then moving it is out of the question, and having to use some other technique to clip it to my desktop (as it seems Safari's web clipper doesn't support this either, sigh) essentially makes the web clipper useless to me.

 

I'm quite surprised this isn't a very common feature request.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Please please consider bringing this feature to Safari's web clipper!  I want to use EN to clip internal corporate info directly to a local notebook.  Corporate policy forbids use of any third party cloud tool for (even temporarily) storing corporate information, so clipping to an online notebook and then moving it is out of the question, and having to use some other technique to clip it to my desktop (as it seems Safari's web clipper doesn't support this either, sigh) essentially makes the web clipper useless to me.

 

I'm quite surprised this isn't a very common feature request.

That does sound frustrating. I wonder if there are some underlying technical things that have resulted in different clipper behaviour on different browsers. 

 

If the ability to clip to the local client is essential, if you are able to you might consider trying Firefox with the extension. This clips straight to the local database as per a post from Jackolicious, an evernote staffer. 

 

I don't know if we'll ever see this in safari, I'm totally ignorant on the topic, but I wonder if there is a technical reason for this difference. 

[jbignert 473]

Most extension frameworks don't allow or discourage extensions from talking directly to a native app . We have no plans to extend this further than what we do today i.e we do this in IE & Firefox Clipper... 

[Harpy 0]

Yes, the FF plugin allows you to bypass clipping "directly" to the cloud, by choosing to save clips locally. HOWEVER, and this is very important, if you need to clip sensitive information, that information will be clipped to your 'default notebook' which will automatically be SYNCED and SCANNED (OCR) at whatever interval you've set up on your client. In order to avoid having your sensitive clip uploaded and scanned into the cloud at your next sync event you must immediately move the note to a LOCAL notebook prior to any sync. This is NOT intuitive (far from it) but I would love to hazard a guess as to why this might be the case, and why there are no plans for RE-implementing what had been an option for many years prior.

 

Evernote's business model has become that of Big Data. They've recognized the treasure trove of data they can collect and utilize and these changes (not being able to select a default LOCAL notebook, clips automatically sent to the cloud to be searched and indexes 'for our convenience of course', clips sent local will of course be sent to a default notebook which of course is synced with the cloud and thus searched and indexed). Evernote retained the option for Firefox users because FF users are much more tech savvy than other browser users, are more inclined to be privacy conscious, and more suspicious overall of being data-mined. They would have received negative blowback. Still, it takes a lot of careful consideration to make sure that your data isn't synced into the cloud and of course there is no reason to believe that at some future time (much like Facebook fiasco) your local notebooks could suddenly become synced with a client update.

 

Because of these risks I have decided that I cannot trust sensitive data to Evernote, which is a shame because it has such great functionality. I really love the cloud aspect, I just want to be sure that the data "in the cloud" is encrypted BY DEFAULT with STRONG encryption which only I have the ability to decrypt. It's MY DATA, MY notes, MY thoughts, MY photos, MY audio files, etc... I don't want this information available to anyone, for ANY reason, unless I explicitly allow it.

 

You wouldn't leave a personal journal laying on a coffee shop table or in a public library for anyone to read would you?

 

You wouldn't scan your personal financial records and leave them on the break-room table at AT&T would you?

 

Why then would you chose to do this with the nice folks at Evernote?

 

Let's face it, data can be hacked, and already has been, as we all know.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Yes, the FF plugin allows you to bypass clipping "directly" to the cloud, by choosing to save clips locally. HOWEVER, and this is very important, if you need to clip sensitive information, that information will be clipped to your 'default notebook' which will automatically be SYNCED and SCANNED (OCR) at whatever interval you've set up on your client. In order to avoid having your sensitive clip uploaded and scanned into the cloud at your next sync event you must immediately move the note to a LOCAL notebook prior to any sync. This is NOT intuitive (far from it) but I would love to hazard a guess as to why this might be the case, and why there are no plans for RE-implementing what had been an option for many years prior.

 

Evernote's business model has become that of Big Data. They've recognized the treasure trove of data they can collect and utilize and these changes (not being able to select a default LOCAL notebook, clips automatically sent to the cloud to be searched and indexes 'for our convenience of course', clips sent local will of course be sent to a default notebook which of course is synced with the cloud and thus searched and indexed). Evernote retained the option for Firefox users because FF users are much more tech savvy than other browser users, are more inclined to be privacy conscious, and more suspicious overall of being data-mined. They would have received negative blowback. Still, it takes a lot of careful consideration to make sure that your data isn't synced into the cloud and of course there is no reason to believe that at some future time (much like Facebook fiasco) your local notebooks could suddenly become synced with a client update.

 

Because of these risks I have decided that I cannot trust sensitive data to Evernote, which is a shame because it has such great functionality. I really love the cloud aspect, I just want to be sure that the data "in the cloud" is encrypted BY DEFAULT with STRONG encryption which only I have the ability to decrypt. It's MY DATA, MY notes, MY thoughts, MY photos, MY audio files, etc... I don't want this information available to anyone, for ANY reason, unless I explicitly allow it.

 

You wouldn't leave a personal journal laying on a coffee shop table or in a public library for anyone to read would you?

 

You wouldn't scan your personal financial records and leave them on the break-room table at AT&T would you?

 

Why then would you chose to do this with the nice folks at Evernote?

 

Let's face it, data can be hacked, and already has been, as we all know.

 

Hi. I think Evernote's business model is a little different than the "big data" bugbear you described. They don't monetize your data, so I think the comparison is not accurate. 

 

As for encryption, Evernote has never encrypted your content on their servers, and doesn't appear interested in doing so, though there was talk at one point about "sexy" encryption. It has been a year since that possibility was raised, and I haven't heard anything else about it. Personally, I am also hesitant to put anything on the cloud in unencrypted form, and so I either use local notebooks with Evernote or another app. 

 

It kind of makes sense that the web clipper runs stuff through Evernote -- it is already on the Web and, in most cases, probably isn't your stuff, right? If you don't like that, you can always copy/paste directly into a note in your local notebook. The amount of effort is about the same, so it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. 

 

Ideally we would be able to have fine control over our privacy, including whether we want a clipping to be sent to Evernote's servers. So, we are in agreement on that. But, Evernote is not set up that way, and doesn't appear inclined to change their approach. It is a choice on their part -- not bad or good, but one with different priorities. It doesn't make them "big data," and it also doesn't make them pioneers in security or privacy either. They are pretty much in line with what most cloud services are doing, for better or for worse.