taxing problem

[bobzani 17]

I'm debating whether to use Evernote as a backup for my income tax returns. I now have them in a "local" notebook. Opinions? 

[DTLow 5,737]

15 minutes ago, bobzani said:

I'm debating whether to use Evernote as a backup for my income tax returns. I now have them in a "local" notebook. Opinions? 

I use EN to store all my documents, including tax returns.

Local notebooks are good for privacy; instead, I use encrypted PDFs and let them sync

You should make sure you have a backup process in place because local notebooks aren't synced - the only copy is on your device

[bobzani 17]

My main concern is the privacy issue. Is it prudent to have my tax returns on Evernote? If it is-how do I go from a "Local" notebook to a synced one?

[jbenson2 2,147]

On the Evernote podcast (#18) Andrew Sinkov, the former Evernote VP of Marketing, said he stores his tax returns on Evernote. He said it could be kept local, but he prefers to keep it sync'd via the server. And this was before Evernote offered 2-factor authentication.

Some of key points that give me confidence in Evernote security are:

• Evernote mitigates risks through a layered set of security policies and technologies.
• Your login information is only transmitted to the servers in encrypted form over SSL, and your passwords are not directly stored on any of our systems.
• There's no uber-index of contents of accounts ... we maintain separate user search indices of each user on decentralized storage with no cross-access between individual servers.
• Like a secure banking site, we encrypt the connections via SSL so that someone on your network can't see your data go by. Your checking balance is not encrypted in your bank's databases, however, and your notes are not encrypted within Evernote.
• Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service restrict what we can (and would) do with your data ... in particular, we have never (and will never) give your own data to other parties.
• When you add a note to the service, it is secured like your email would be at a high-end email provider. This means that your notes are stored in a private, locked cage at a guarded data center that can only be accessed by a small number of Evernote operations personnel.
• Physical access to all storage (online and offline-backup) requires multiple authentication factors in protected facilities, and is restricted to only the four full-time IT/Operations staff that maintain the servers.
• The former CEO Phil Libin said even he didn't have passcards and keys to the data center. Security policy says that the departure of any such staff will result in full rekey and change of all passwords, etc.
• Administrative maintenance on these servers can only be performed through secure, encrypted communications by the same set of people. All network access to these servers is similarly protected by a set of firewalls and hardened servers.
• If you have some notes that you only want to access from a single computer, you can place these into a "Local Notebook" on our Windows or Mac client. Notes in a Local Notebook are never transmitted to our service, so they aren't accessible from the web, or from your other computers.
   

[DTLow 5,737]

1 hour ago, bobzani said:

My main concern is the privacy issue. Is it prudent to have my tax returns on Evernote? If it is-how do I go from a "Local" notebook to a synced one?

You have to make the decision on how much risk you want to take.
Some people might say put nothing in the cloud; don't connect your computer to the internet
I'm not that paranoid - I put everything into sync'd notetbooks,
and just assume my info is being read by agents from NSA, Chinese, Google 

As I said, if you're concerned - you can encrypt your data

Sync'd notebooks are created by default; go to the notebook page
You can't switch the notebook settings - you have to move your notes to the new notebook

 

[jbenson2 2,147]

There are many posts on security in this forum.

Regarding your question about your tax returns, there is not a black and white answer.

For example: are you 100% confident in the computer coding inside your computer IC's? Are you sure they don't have any nefarious coding?
 

[bobzani 17]

Many thanks for all your input.

[CalS 5,284]

17 hours ago, bobzani said:

I'm debating whether to use Evernote as a backup for my income tax returns. I now have them in a "local" notebook. Opinions? 

A little late to the game.  I keep my tax returns and related documents in my LOCAL notebook in EN.  I tag the notes with the year preceded by an underscore, _2016 for example.  Obviously do my own backups.