(Archived) Privacy in Evernote 5

[Guest mrossk]

Hello.

 

I can't test Evernote 5 beta because I'm using Evernote in a producutive environment and so the risk of using a beta is too high.

 

Some questions about privacy in Evernote 5:

 

The only way to separate private and business notes is to put them in separate notebooks or stacks.

 

I never want so see any single private note on my business screen because I also search/use Evernote when doing the following:

• Showing presentations
  
• Use remote access on my computer
  
• Work together at my computer with some business-people that watch at my monitor
  

So I never want to see any private text-snippset/picture in a search-query or recent note or related note or elsewhere on my business screen.

 

Now I read the following about Evernote 5 beta:

1. You "can" search in all private, connected, business notebooks together.
   
2. Typeahead shows the recently searches
   
3. There is a preview of related notes
   

Are all these "features" optional in Version 5? If not, then I have to stop using Evernote exact at the day when it arrives because I can't mix private and business notes. At no place. Even not in the search suggestions.

 

I really hope that it will be still possible to completely divide private and business notebooks in the future version, otherwise I have to move about 1000 often complex structured/tagged notes manually away from Evernote to another system. This would be a desaster for me.

 

Creating a second account is not an option.

 

I hope you take privacy serious and all this new "features" are only optional.

 

Marcel.

[JYB72 1]

I totally agree with bronwcoat: this change is unacceptable and unproductive.

JYB

[gustavgi 308]

I think you can click Business Notebooks and Search Current Context, leaving out private stuff

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I agree that this can be

Hello.

 

I can't test Evernote 5 beta because I'm using Evernote in a producutive environment and so the risk of using a beta is too high.

 

Some questions about privacy in Evernote 5:

 

The only way to separate private and business notes is to put them in separate notebooks or stacks.

 

I never want so see any single private note on my business screen because I also search/use Evernote when doing the following:

• Showing presentations
• Use remote access on my computer
• Work together at my computer with some business-people that watch at my monitor

So I never want to even see any private text-snippset/picture in a search-queery or recent note or related note or elsewhere on my business screen.

 

Now I read the following about Evernote 5 beta:

• You "can" search in all private, connected, business notebooks together.
• Typeahead shows the recently searches
• There is a preview of related notes

Are all these "features" optional in Version 5? If not, then I have to stop using Evernote exact at the day when it arrives because I can't mix private and business notes. At no place. Even not in the search suggestions.

 

I really hope that it will be still possible to completely divide private and business notebooks in the future version, otherwise I have to move about 1000 often complex structured notes manually away from Evernote to another system. This would be a desaster for me.

 

Creating a second account is not an option.

 

I hope you take privacy serious and all this new "features" are only optional.

 

Marcel.

I agree that this can be a real problem if you allow others to view your account. You could hope that search suggestions won't show, a private note won't inadvertently get put into a public notebook, or that you don't inadvertently open the wrong notebook, but I think it is a lot to think about when you are (for example) giving a presentation. A bunch of carefully created saved searches with advanced search grammar ought to help, but in my case, I have not only shown private notes in a public setting (to my chagrin) but even accidentally created private notes in a public notebook (now that things are mixed, it is quite easy to make this mistake).

My recommendation if you have this concern is to create one account for public consumption and another for private. Share the business-related notebooks with your private one and you can work just as if they were all in the same account. When you are working with others, then you can just switch accounts (it is an option in the menu -- it only takes a second) and be in the business account with no chance of inadvertently showing private stuff.

[Guest mrossk]

Hi GrumpyMonkey.

 

A while ago I have already tried to share notebooks of a business-related account to a private-related account:

Switching between the accounts in Windwows is not the problem, but there are too many other disadvantages:

 

Examples:

• Changing of tags is not possible if they are generated in the other account
• Your note-size is limited to 25 MB if your "upload-account" is only a free account. And I don't want to pay 2x for this
• On the smartphone you also have to switch between these accounts

This is too much of workaround. I can only hope/beg that they do not program too much clutter / "playing arounds" in the new version but keep it clean and serious.

 

Marcel.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Yes. There are disadvantages to be sure, and I can understand why you say that it is too much of a workaround. Personally, I would like to be able to have a lot more control over the account. For example, I would like:

(1) a toggle to display / not access shared and joined notebooks so that we don't have to "leave" a joined notebook just to keep it from appearing in search results and indexes.

(2) a toggle on/off for incremental search

(3) a toggle on/off for type-ahead search

(4) a toggle on/off for lock/unlock of notes

(5) a toggle on/off for offline/online notebooks (like on mobile, otherwise known as selective sync)

(6) password protect / encrypt notebooks

I am sure there are many more features that other users would like to see. At the moment, Evernote is a little too constrained by the lack of customizability to meet the needs of users in different environments. At the moment, a university researcher still has to use the same interface as an elementary school student. A businessperson in a large company has to use the same interface as a small business owner. Someone with 50,000 notes has to use incremental search just like someone with 5 notes (the result is considerable lag). It doesn't make sense to me and leads to contorted workarounds.

I think Evernote will get there eventually, but I would like to prod them along to move a bit faster

Regarding encryption of data, it looks like Google might be headed in the same direction as SpiderOak by providing zero-knowledge encryption. This would be a huge step forward in the industry, and hopefully Evernote will follow suit.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57594171-38/google-tests-encryption-to-protect-users-drive-files-against-government-demands/

The idea here would be to have a notebook that is not indexed by Evernote. It would not show up in your recent searches, would not show up in search suggestions, and would not even be accidentally accessible by you until you unlocked it. Obviously, you wouldn't want this for all of your notes, but for certain private ones, it could be very helpful.