Hi, thanks for trying to address this. I'm not sure we are fully understanding each other yet:
The options for clipper access include one in which you can click on the Evernote icon while visiting a specific website in order to allow the clipper to read/write on that website. Many web clippers and similar extensions like price trackers have worked fine that way: to my knowledge there's never been any restriction built into chrome OS that prevents a web clipper or similar extension from being turned on and off from site to site.
Permission to track you on all sites, including inside your bank accounts, client accounts, etc., is a whole different thing -- not necessary.
So what I am describing sounds much more like either a bug in the extension or a deliberate decision by Evernote to disable the clipper unless continuous full access is granted. My question was about whether anybody knows which it is.
To give a clearer use case: I might travel to a news site, see something that I need to clip, and click on the Evernote extension icon in order to do so. That is supposed to provide full permissions to Evernote to interact with CNN for as long as I am on the website, and the extension is supposed to be capable of recognizing that permission and functioning normally on that website once I have click that button. if I then surf over to, say, Vanguard, Evernote would not automatically have access to read and write on that website, so it would not be able to interact with the website, clip anything, connect that clipping to my account. That is an appropriate restriction, and not to my knowledge technologically complicated..
it is not a matter of trusting Evernote's owners. it's a matter of reducing the number of unnecessary paths by which third party can gain access to sensitive information. Popular web clippers are a natural target of malicious third parties, precisely, because so many people grant them unlimited access to follow them everywhere around the Internet, reading and writing from all of their most sensitive accounts. The ownership of Evernote has changed repeatedly in the years that I have been a user, and it's not possible for me to keep track of how good each owner is at preventing the insertion of malicious code into their extension.
To summarize, many similar extensions have worked perfectly if turned on only for certain sites and left off for other sites. That is supposed to be how the "click to give permission " option works. It is how it used to work for the Evernote clipper. It doesn't work that way now. The desire to have it worked that way again doesn't imply any assumption that the current Evernote ownership is interested in spying or stealing data. Rather, it's just consistent with best practices if you are accessing highly secure information at some points as you move around the Internet.
Thanks,
A.
