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Password Protected Notebooks


EvernoteLover9

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I fully agree. I should be able to lock Evernote with a pass code if I want to. That should be an option in these security-conscious times we live in with every instance of Evernote I have. But it's not.

Evernote on my Android phone and tablet have a pass code. Evernote on my Mac laptop does not offer a pass code. Why? Yes, Evernote is for millions of users. Good. I'm happy it's successful and will be around in the future. I depend on Evernote for archiving important documents. Just make using a pass code optional for those of us who want to use it. For those who don't, they don't have to activate the pass code function. How hard is that?

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Hi.  This thread started out about Evernote Web,  and @scruggles meant (I think) that password requests are usually for the installed desktop product as @Waco Ed has confirmed.  Plus @Aseem Bansal started this thread by looking for some way to mark individual Notebooks (Notes?) "private" which doesn't necessarily say 'password' to me.  Evernote might be looking at other ways to satisfy the various requests they've had.

However I apologise for being probably too negative in my first response.  It's not a question of "just" making something available - there are thousands of requests in the pipeline for mindmapping / tag management / colors / etc etc.  I agreed that this is a good request - but Evernote have to prioritize and fit development work into what must by now be a crowded schedule of OS and device bug fixing and maintenance.  They'll put the most popular and potentially customer satisfying features early in the queue.  I don't know where this request will come,  but the more clicks it has in the top right left corner,  the more impact you'll have.  I added mine... but I'm not holding my breath.

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1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Hi.  This thread started out about Evernote Web,  and @scruggles meant (I think) that password requests are usually for the installed desktop product as @Waco Ed has confirmed.  Plus @Aseem Bansal started this thread by looking for some way to mark individual Notebooks (Notes?) "private" which doesn't necessarily say 'password' to me.  Evernote might be looking at other ways to satisfy the various requests they've had.

However I apologise for being probably too negative in my first response.  It's not a question of "just" making something available - there are thousands of requests in the pipeline for mindmapping / tag management / colors / etc etc.  I agreed that this is a good request - but Evernote have to prioritize and fit development work into what must by now be a crowded schedule of OS and device bug fixing and maintenance.  They'll put the most popular and potentially customer satisfying features early in the queue.  I don't know where this request will come,  but the more clicks it has in the top right left corner,  the more impact you'll have.  I added mine... but I'm not holding my breath.

I was thinking password but if they can make it private in some other way I am fine with that. I am not sure how that could work in an alternate way but I think I have added enough details for their product team to make an informed decision. I was thinking protection at the notebook level. 

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On 7/23/2016 at 5:58 AM, Waco Ed said:

I fully agree. I should be able to lock Evernote with a pass code if I want to. That should be an option in these security-conscious times we live in with every instance of Evernote I have. But it's not.

Evernote on my Android phone and tablet have a pass code. Evernote on my Mac laptop does not offer a pass code. Why? Yes, Evernote is for millions of users. Good. I'm happy it's successful and will be around in the future. I depend on Evernote for archiving important documents. Just make using a pass code optional for those of us who want to use it. For those who don't, they don't have to activate the pass code function. How hard is that?

I hope you upvoted the thread. It would help if people actually upvote this.

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I use Evernote a lot. But for any sensitive information, I store it in local notebooks. I would never trust Evernote with it given the technology deployed currently. Between hackers, the government, and court orders, I'd say Evernote can't win, although they may do a great job fighting off the hordes.

After personal data is leaked (by whatever means), its too late for an apology, etc.

However there are times when I am not where my PC with the local notebooks is located. And I wish I had access. Given the relative insecurity of Evernote, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. I've been considering two options:

  • an account with a service like SpiderOak, I would still keep my local notebooks in Evernote, but have them regularly backed up to SpiderOak. Then if I needed when traveling, I'd have Spideroak access on my mobile PC, along with the encryption key, and could download and view Evernote on my mobile PC.
  • Try to use Boxcryptor and move my Local Notebook directory onto an encrypted folder on that device. Boxcryptor would be linked to my Dropbox.

Has anyone either tried either of these or have any feedback on the ideas?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

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+1 

I have been using Evernote for years now as a Premium customer and have over 4,000 personal notes. I recently led an effort to get my whole team of 50 on Evernote Business at work and we love most of its features but this lack of password protection and encryption is its most glaring weakness. It also seems like a fairly easy-to-implement feature and one that is widely requested and available from competing platforms. Not sure why Evernote has not prioritized this. 

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I totally understand that Evernote needs to make money but that's the strange thing! -  With apple offering passcode protected notes for free there is no way I'm going to pay for an upgrade to Evernote Premium. With the most recent (and reasonable) restriction to only having Evernote Basic sync with two devices I'm really only staying for historical reasons and laziness but I'm much more likely to leave than upgrade. Perhaps that's the Evernote strategy for weeding out freebie users? 

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+1.   I googled how to do this assuming that I just didn't know how.  Really kind of shocked.  Like others, I don't need a separate encrypted store, just the ability to password protect a notebook, or even a stack.  Just like you can a file folder . 

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Adding my voice to the chorus of support for basic note password protection and, perhaps later, true encryption.  The notion that this hampers the search and OCR features of the app is irrelevant to me -- I simply wouldn't expect either to touch a password-protected note.  Seriously, this is a very simple, long-standing ask and the Evernote silence round the matter is all but deafening.  Regards,

Mark D.

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On 02/09/2016 at 8:37 PM, Mark Drury said:

Adding my voice to the chorus of support for basic note password protection and, perhaps later, true encryption.  The notion that this hampers the search and OCR features of the app is irrelevant to me -- I simply wouldn't expect either to touch a password-protected note.  Seriously, this is a very simple, long-standing ask and the Evernote silence round the matter is all but deafening.  Regards,

Mark D.

the Evernote silence around this,  and every other development issue is standard practice.  Doesn't mean they haven't heard your request,  or that they agree or disagree with the need.  Just that they don't (usually) answer questions like this.  Ever. <_<

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Hi. Personally, I'd prefer if they didn't waste time with cosmetic protections (if someone has access to your user account on the computer, they can easily find everything in Evernote without even opening the app). I'd recommend creating a separate user account on your computer. You can switch users in just one or two seconds. It's fast, convenient, secure, and already built into your computer :)

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Maybe we need to define what we expect to happen with a "locked" notebook.

1. We already have private vs public settings.

2. We have the ability to segregate information into separate notebooks.

3. We have the ability to encrypt text strings within notes.

What would you expect with a locked notebook?

a. password-protected access for viewing. Password needed to lock and unlock? 

b. Encryption of the contents of the notebook? ( I wouldn't need this. For passwords, etc, I use another program)

c. Hiding contents of the notebook from searches? (This is the feature that I would like the most. I have some PDFs of contract docs, for example.  or some text notes on company policy, etc.  Evernote is a good place for them, but I don't want them to show up in a search).

d. Would a locked note (as opposed to a locked notebook) be sufficient?

 

 

How about you? We're more likely to get a feature like this if we say exactly what it is that we want.

 

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My request is simple - I use Evernote for lots of things - and several people share the devices I have evernote on.   I would like to be able to password protect certain notebooks (journal, financial info, etc).  I also like the idea of excluding some items from search. 

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On 2016-09-12 at 4:29 AM, GrumpyMonkey said:

Hi. Personally, I'd prefer if they didn't waste time with cosmetic protections (if someone has access to your user account on the computer, they can easily find everything in Evernote without even opening the app). I'd recommend creating a separate user account on your computer. You can switch users in just one or two seconds. It's fast, convenient, secure, and already built into your computer :)

Actually, that sounds better than it works.  I had a separate account for work stuff and for the past year switching between two accounts didn't work (folks at evernote never found what causes the problem). I gave up the 2nd account in frustration. Even if it did work I'm not sure I would go back to two accounts. There is something nice about knowing everything is in one place.

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Like other users, I too am concerned about encryption of personal content in the journals.  I have been an avid Evernote user, but may switch to another service for this reason.  I have not found one with the features of Evernote or Onenote...

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Both of these are frequently requested, and feature requests for both already exist. I'd suggest doing a forum search, and adding your vote there, rather than making new requests.

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On 29-11-2016 at 11:31 PM, DTLow said:

Until this gets implemented, be aware of the text encryption feature.

I also use encrypted PDF attachments

I just discovered a great free open source scanner PDF tool: NAPS2  https://www.naps2.com/

"...Scan with a single click. Easily scan with your chosen settings, or set up multiple profiles for different devices and configurations. Once you've finished scanning, you can save, email, or print with only a couple clicks. Save to PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, or other file types

..."

You can scan your documents and then save them as a searchable encrypted pdf file.  You can also import already scanned documents and save or merge them back into pdf.

This is a perfect fit in my evernote workflow!

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2 minutes ago, eric99 said:

I just discovered a great free open source scanner PDF tool: NAPS2  https://www.naps2.com/

"...Scan with a single click. Easily scan with your chosen settings, or set up multiple profiles for different devices and configurations. Once you've finished scanning, you can save, email, or print with only a couple clicks. Save to PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, or other file types

..."

You can scan your documents and then save them as a searchable encrypted pdf file.  You can also import already scanned documents and save or merge them back into pdf.

This is a perfect fit in my evernote workflow!

Clarification: although encrypted search technology already exists, you can not search inside an encrypted pdf file

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3 hours ago, eric99 said:

Clarification: although encrypted search technology already exists, you can not search inside an encrypted pdf file

Thats the downside to encryption - it blocks the search feature

It would be even serious if the entire notebook was encrypted

I'm adding enough details in the title, and text in the note so there is data for the search

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Strong encryption at the notebook level (eg, all note content, and all note metadata (eg title, tags, creation date, change history) with no escrowing of keys, and the ability to perform rich-text-editing of the contents of an encrypted note (which includes encryption of attachments to the note) on any device, is a requirement before I will pay for Evernote.

I'll use the free basic account lightly until then, but I won't go "all in" with Evernote until this is implemented.

As a software developer who has implemented all the parts of encrypted note store functionality which I envision, I assure you there is no rocket-science to doing this, these days. You want one or more seasoned developers to do it, but it is certainly do-able.

To do it properly (given the current feature sets), EN will need to implement both server-side crypto (for EN Web and EN APIs), and client-side-only crypto (for tin-foil hats like me who are annoyed at the fact that GCHQ and NSA have staff and/or data-feeds and/or secret letters which enable them to access anything stored in the major cloud services, and are concerned about APT threats to corporate data -- such as what has recently been disclosed about Russia's and WikiLeak's actions in the US elections.

To do it properly, sync-ing and change history and search indexing should be enhanced to work properly with ciphertext (post-encryption) as well as plain-text (unencrypted) content.

Encryption does not mean you can't have searchability -- EN would need to index the unencrypted text, then encrypt the resulting search indices with the appropriate encryption key.  Then, in order to search, the search engine would need to decrypt the indices which it can using the password(s) which the user has provided, in order to include those indexed values in the search process.  This might not scale to be able search millions of users' databases in a single query -- which is actually quite desirable from my perspective -- but it should scale quite comfortably for 1 to 1000 users/passwords over 1 to 1000 notebooks.

Modern mid-to-high-end cell phones have enough RAM and enough CPU to provide searching of client-side-encrypted notebooks (eg, keys never supplied to servers); I can't speak for others, but for me, only indexing of note metadata and note text would be good enough (eg, no client-side searching of attachments such as PDFs).

Finally, client-side encryption does not mean you can't share encrypted documents on the server, or do server-side merging of encrypted changes from multiple people.  To support these features you'd need to use public key-encryption, and it does mean you'd need to canonicalize the pasted-in HTML which you store or create, since the unit of merging and change history recording would need to match the unit of encryption -- which I suggest would be a complete HTML tag and its nested children, for simplicity.

If I were designing the feature set, I would make the recording in the change history of who initiated certain changes and when they were done, a configurable feature at the notebook level, to provide a degree of plausible deniability. You would need to record change sequence, but you should allow updates to be persisted anonymously.

Implementing server-side key-escrow/storage for those users who want it (eg, corporations) is not a big deal either.  For those who don't want it, it should be possible to prove by inspection, that the encryption key is not hidden in any files which are synced to the server, and is never sent to the servers using an API, unless a user initiates such a transfer explicitly, and is never stored on disk locally.

You should allow a user to use different keys for different documents (and even different sections of a single document) within an encrypted notebook.  

In summary, I believe the problems which need to be solved are well understood, are tractable, and do not involve any compromise of the current feature set.  So EN, please just do it!

PS: I encourage you to crowd-source a detailed technical requirements spec, and the priority of various features, in order to ensure you don't miss critical security details, and that you implement features in the correct order to avoid serious gotchas along the way.   If you go this way, I would be interested in participating.

 

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I fully agree with GrumpyMonkey but I see even one more fact: If you see 90 votes for this feature and assuming that only every tenth user using the votes feature, we know this is an important and very often asked request. Now it is not on our side to solve it technically. EN has many of talented developers and they can do a good job - and maybe they have even started working on that. But what I really miss here - on this 18 pages discussion: A clear statement from EN. Do they want to do this or not - or whatsoever.

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1 hour ago, Frank Blome said:

A clear statement from EN. Do they want to do this or not - or whatsoever.

That is such an important comment. I miss the good old days when Evernote employees were permitted to answer and explain why a decision was made or not made.

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2 hours ago, jbenson2 said:

That is such an important comment. I miss the good old days when Evernote employees were permitted to answer and explain why a decision was made or not made.

Yup. I've completely given up patience with Evernote, and really kept the notifications to this thread active to see if/how long it would take to finally implement something.

As the saying goes; the silence is deafening.

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20 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

if evernote wanted to do it, they could

This is the takeaway, as far as I'm concerned.

That may change with the new leadership team, but when I look at Evernote, I see a lot of similarities with GMail (in terms of their approaches to organization and search), and I don't believe that GMail has password protected folders either (for reference, see this, this, this, etc.). Not conclusive, but telling, to my mind. After digging a bit, I also came up with this Evernote forum thread that seems to show the flavor of Evernote's thinking on the topic, as espoused by their then-CTO Dave Engberg. (note: i didn't read past the first two (of 32!) thread pages). I don't see that that's changed.

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+1 for extending encryption to a Notebook basis.

As a minimum Notebook encryption...

But don't stop there... client-side Full account encryption through the app. No problem if web access is useless.

And speaking of client-side, enable the client to optionally search encrypted content using the local key (yes, I said "local"... I don't want to pass my key to your servers).

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As much as I would like to see note or notebook level encryption, I have given up hope, at least for the foreseeable future.  Evernote's Director of Security has come right out and said they have no plans for that right now and with their emphasis on machine learning, I would think they need access to unencrypted data.  They seem like opposing visions, and unfortunately for me, they are focusing on the one that I have zero interest in.

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+1 for having encryption for any Notebooks of my choosing. Let it be MY decision that search may not work for a secured Notebook. Geez, I can certainly work around that obstacle. Without this feature I will eventually have to leave you. 

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I absolutely want much stronger encryption options in Evernote.  I already have started using other applications now because of this issue like many other people in this thread.  I do not want Evernote employees or anyone else reading my notes.  This should be a major priority to implement - especially after the privacy policy debacle this week.

"Machine Learning" should not absolutely not be the focus of future development.  That is so absurd, I can't even believe some people at Evernote think that is a good idea.  Evernote really needs to get back on track.  I believe Evernote is out of touch with regard to what customers want and need.

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On 12/12/2016 at 10:47 AM, jefito said:

This is the takeaway, as far as I'm concerned.

That may change with the new leadership team, but when I look at Evernote, I see a lot of similarities with GMail (in terms of their approaches to organization and search), and I don't believe that GMail has password protected folders either (for reference, see this, this, this, etc.). Not conclusive, but telling, to my mind. After digging a bit, I also came up with this Evernote forum thread that seems to show the flavor of Evernote's thinking on the topic, as espoused by their then-CTO Dave Engberg. (note: i didn't read past the first two (of 32!) thread pages). I don't see that that's changed.

I'm hoping to get Evernote to commit to something meaningful by posting some thoughts here. Evernote should recognize that their product is not equivalent to Google's, and they should not try to become Google. See here:

 

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Dear Evernote,

I would like to request, as many have, one essential feature to the Evernote desktop app for Mac. 

I teach an English and Chinese Language class for a college where we require all of our 100+ students to utilize MacBooks for classroom learning of languages.

The ability to password lock notebooks, which is one layer more specific than what is available on the iPhone and iPad (eg. app lock), is essential in order for us to continue using the note taking app as our teaching tool. Individual notebook locking allows us to leave laptops logged in with Evernote running permanently in the background while still providing beginner, intermediate, and advanced student access to topic specific notebooks without having to lock down individual notes or entire laptops. 

Please introduce this feature in an update to Evernote for MacBooks or our institution will be forced to change our Required Student Tools and Materials list to a note taking app which enables such functions.

Sincerely,

Howie D.

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Dear Evernote,

I would like to request as many have, one essential feature to the Evernote desktop app for Mac. 

I teach an English and Chinese Language class for a college where we require all of our 100+ students to utilize MacBooks for classroom learning of languages.

The ability to password lock notebooks, which is one layer more specific than what is available on the iPhone and iPad (eg. app lock), is essential in order for us to continue using the note taking app as our teaching tool. Individual notebook locking allows us to leave laptops logged in with Evernote running permanently in the background while still limiting or providing control over beginner, intermediate, and advanced student access to topic specific notebooks without having to lock down individual notes or entire laptops. 

Please introduce this feature in an update to Evernote for MacBooks or our institution will be forced to change our Required Student Tools and Materials list to a note taking app which enables such functions.

Sincerely,

Howie D.

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I could not agree more, Microsoft OneNote has this function so why can't we do this in EverNote. This feature unfortunately is a deal breaker for me and it means we will not be looking to recommend this program to our clients. Online security is important and we need to be able to maintain the privacy of individual notebooks. Please Evernote I have recently purchased your premium plan and have so far been impressed with its offerings however this needs to be implemented to ensure that your product is superior to others similar to it on the market.

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I moved about 250 notes out of Evernote about weeks ago that I was not comfortable with being stored in Evernote without encryption - and it was too many to go through one by one and encrypt. They were all in one notebook.

Where I am keeping them is not as nice as Evernote, I would move them back if encryption was taken more seriously by Evernote. But not for now.

I also saw I got a big iOS update to Evernote today, I quickly scanned the note to see if anything was done with encryption - alas no. Evernote is more focused on adding features that can be blogged about than corrected an egregious security oversight in its lack of true encryption support.

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16 hours ago, Don0819 said:

They were all in one notebook.

If you're on the Windows/Mac platform, you could use a Local Notebook

Note: You should backup local notebooks

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54 minutes ago, DTLow said:

If you're on the Windows/Mac platform, you could use a Local Notebook

Note: You should backup local notebooks

Thanks DTLow, but these notes I use often so I need them syncing across my devices. I thought about whether local would work...

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4 hours ago, bongobong said:

Whoa whoa whoa, it's not encrypted? 

And no passworded notebooks? 

Correct - my solution has been to encrypt the specific data I need secure

>>This is what I don't get. What are Evernote doing with their time / these updates? 
Evernote has not given any indication of plans for encrypting notebooks
If you check release notes, you can find what they've been focusing on

 

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13 hours ago, ThomasKolasa said:

Where we should vote/yell/write to, to make sure that somebody would take this seriously?

Voting buttons are in the upper left corner of the discussion  Screen Shot 2017-01-29 at 6.34.33 AM.png

Evernote is aware of the request, but so far has decided to not implement password protected/encrypted notebooks

 

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2 hours ago, ColdGin said:

It could be a great feature.....and will help us all to get more sensitive info into our notebooks....
Hope will be soon implemented

I've seen no indication Evernote is interested in implementing encryption beyond text within notes

I'd recommend looking to alternate methods
I use encrypted pdfs

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

I've seen no indication Evernote is interested in implementing encryption beyond text within notes

I'd recommend looking to alternate methods
I use encrypted pdfs

How do you quickly create an encrypted pdf note on a mobile device? More specific, do you have a pdf editor app that can create a new note from scratch, add text and images and store it in an encrypted pdf that can be sent to evernote ?

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6 minutes ago, eric99 said:

How do you quickly create an encrypted pdf note on a mobile device? More specific, do you have a pdf editor app that can create a new note from scratch, add text and images and store it in an encrypted pdf that can be sent to evernote ?

Sorry, my process is to wait and do this on my Mac - it's built into the Mac OS

Others will better advise you on a mobile process.  There's actually two challenges: convert to PDF, then encrypyt PDF 

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3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Sorry, my process is to wait and do this on my Mac - it's built into the Mac OS

Others will have to advise you on a mobile process.  There's actually two challenges: convert to PDF, then encrypyt PDF 

Thanks, what I'm really looking for is not a convertor from "evernote notes" to PDF, but another editor app in which I can fully create a new note, similar to the evernote editor. The encrypted pdf output can then be shared via email to evernote as an attachment.

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I have moved anything requiring encryption of notebooks or many notes within a notebook to iCloud Notes, which has a nice folder structure. Evernote is easier to use for me, but I can access Notes on all my devices/computers. It is what it is as long as Evernote is insensitive to my security/privacy. 

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1 minute ago, eric99 said:

another editor app in which I can fully create a new note, similar to the evernote editor.

My favourite app for note taking on my iPad is Notability.  While Editing, I store the file in its native format as an attachment; when finished, the app exports to pdf

>>The encrypted pdf output can then be shared via email to evernote as an attachment.

Thats why I like the pdf format - it's so portable

Also in my backups

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2 hours ago, Don0819 said:

I have moved anything requiring encryption of notebooks or many notes within a notebook to iCloud Notes, 

Apple Notes?

I'm an Apple fanboy - been using Notes from the beginning
There's been great improvements lately
Still, I don't consider it an Evernote replacement for me
- I like Evernote's tag/search organization
- Its important for me to have an exit strategy

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6 minutes ago, JonK1238 said:

100% agree with this. The ability to lock specific notebooks with a password or pin code would be a huge step forward. 

Has there been any feedback from Evernote or anybody regarding this?

There has been no indication from Evernote that they intend to implement this feature

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On 5-2-2017 at 7:04 PM, eric99 said:

Thanks, what I'm really looking for is not a convertor from "evernote notes" to PDF, but another editor app in which I can fully create a new note, similar to the evernote editor. The encrypted pdf output can then be shared with evernote as an attachment.

I Finally found XODO, a very nice editor for Android or IPhone, even better than the OneNote editor, AND completely platform neutral and portable because it saves to (encrypted) PDF!  This way it offers zero knowledge encryption if required. Today I use it to create encrypted pdf notes for evernote, however this tool has much more potential since it can already sync nicely with dropbox, supports online collaboration and much more.

XODO, in combination with dropbox, may become a real Evernote competitor if evernote refuses to provide better encryption!

http://www.xodo.com/

"... With Xodo, you can edit, annotate, sign, and share PDFs on desktop, mobile, and web. Xodo makes working with PDFs quick and easy, so you can get things done. ..."

Edit:  There is a Web version as well, but I have the impression that the Android App is more mature: for instance on Android you can create a note / document from scratch which is important if used as a replacement for the Evernote editor.

I just realized that you can easily import all your Evernote notes to XODO using https://www.exportnote.com/ and from then on, your notes are portable and zero-knowledge-encrypted if you like :-)

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41 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Can you tell us about the storage/organization features if XODO?

Since I just discovered it, I use it only to create encrypted notes from scratch for evernote. Since their editor is so powerfull, I don't need the evernote editor for complex notes.

I'm just saying that XODO may evolve to a serious competitor, but today, it already solves my most important issue: text and image compression into a standard format that will still be readable in a 100 years ;-)  (without evernote).

If you would like to use it as an evernote replacement, you may use regular folder organization in the native file system. I read that they have some search functionality inside the documents, but I don't think that it can replace all evernote features right now.

edit: I think https://www.exportnote.com/ organizes the imported evernote notes in folders as well

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16 minutes ago, eric99 said:

Since I just discovered it, I use it only to produce encrypted notes for evernote.

Well thanks for that.  I'll look into it for my iPad.  I don't think I'll be exporting all my Evernote notes

I do use the PDF format extensively, and make use of encrypted PDFs for confidential data.

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Interesting find @eric99! Thanks for sharing. 

It has kick-butt reviews on the Google Play store, 4.5/5 stars with >62,000 reviews.

Easy notebook encryption is what we currently need for our school and individual PDF encryptions to export into EN is rather janky and unproductive. 

Xodo looks to be an alternative to PDF Pen Pro on the Mac, or PDF Expert on iOS, correct me if I'm wrong. A powerful PDF editor yes, but that seems to be about it? These two apps mentioned, and even Preview for Mac offers password encryption of PDF's. 

Thanks!

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This is interesting, I don't think this is the full solution we seek yet but maybe it's coming!

I saw this article today, saying Evernote's migration to Google Cloud Platform, and away from their own backend servers, is almost complete:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/09/evernote-google-cloud-platform/

You may see that one of the points in that article is it says the platform will supply "Encryption at rest", automatically. That feature is summarized here:

https://cloud.google.com/security/encryption-at-rest/

So I am not an expert on this, but it seems "Encryption at rest" gives Evernote the ability to have everything encrypted that they store on the Google servers, which is better than no encryption but it still doesn't give Evernote users the ability to have unique encryption protection with their own key. Someone would need to know the key(s) Evernote uses in order to access sensitive data, but a breach of Evernote security/keys would unlock all Evernote user data. So it's better (data is encrypted), but not really acceptable (because it's encrypted at the Evernote level not at the user level) - yet.

Looking further into Google Cloud Platform encryption at the link above, it does provide the ability for customer supplied keys, offered as a service that a customer like Evernote could use, without having to implement the backend support. So maybe the unannounced Evernote plan would be, once they complete the migration of their petabytes of data onto GCP, and get out from under the maintenance and support of their own servers, they can use what GCP offers to provide a much more robust encryption capability to Evernote users who need it? I can see how challenging it would be to build an encryption solution on their own proprietary back-end servers. That issue would go away with GCP.

Is this a reasonable theory?

It would be nice if Evernote would announce something so customers may decide to stop pulling sensitive data off Evernote - or at least be prepared to migrate back if the plan succeeds.

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3 hours ago, howdoogie said:

Xodo looks to be an alternative to PDF Pen Pro on the Mac, or PDF Expert on iOS, correct me if I'm wrong. A powerful PDF editor yes, but that seems to be about it? These two apps mentioned, and even Preview for Mac offers password encryption of PDF's. 

Thanks!

Well, if you can create an entirely new PDF file in these two apps, it's probably quit similar, but these are for Apple devices. I was looking for Android apps and finally found XODO which offers me zero-knowledge-encryption in a standard format. An encrypted pdf attachment in a note allows me to add extra unencrypted text / tags which is impossible if the notebook would be completely encrypted.

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48 minutes ago, Don0819 said:

I saw this article today, saying Evernote's migration to Google Cloud Platform, and away from their own backend servers, is almost complete:

The encryption at rest is a good feature but  not related to this discussion's request for Notebook encryption 

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15 hours ago, Antonia @ jj said:

Hello!  I am a new evernote user and have been reading about encrypt single notes, but I cant seem to find any explanation as to how to apply this encryption, can anyone give me some guidance??? thanking you all in advance x

@Antonia @ jj Select the text you'd like to have encrypted --> click Edit from menu --> select "Encrypt selected text"

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16 hours ago, Antonia @ jj said:

Hello!  I am a new evernote user and have been reading about encrypt single notes, but I cant seem to find any explanation as to how to apply this encryption, can anyone give me some guidance??? 

Text encryption is an Evernote feature on the Windows/Mac platforms.  The text can be decrypted for viewing on all platforms.

As per @Howdoogie, just select the text, right-click and select Encrypt

For more extensive encryption, you have to look to third party software.
Saferoom works at the note level.
I use encrypted PDFs

 

 

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24 minutes ago, DTLow said:

The encryption at rest is a good feature but  not related to this discussion's request for Notebook encryption 

To me it seems that it is related if it's an indication that Evernote moving to a new cloud platform will give us both notebook encryption and something even better, as some have mentioned the ability to have, for example, ALL my Evernote data encrypted using my own Evernote password as a key! If you read my entire post, I wondered if the reason we had not seen Notebook encryption was because of the difficulty in implementing robust back-end encryption, which Google Cloud now offers Evernote as a service. 

 

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2 minutes ago, Don0819 said:

the reason we had not seen Notebook encryption was because of the difficulty in implementing robust back-end encryption

Evernote currently offers "robust back-end" encryption via the text encryption and I'm sure its feasible to extend this.

There are a various reasons for Evernote not implementing the feature.  

For now, you're going to have to use your own encryption resources, or switch to another product

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16 minutes ago, DTLow said:

For now, you're going to have to use your own encryption resources, or switch to another product

I was just trying to post some relevant news that may provide a solution in the future. I wasn't asking for advice, thanks. You can find my post earlier, I have resolved this issue for now in my own case. I thought the movement to the Google Cloud may be of interest to others as it's clearly offering the potential for a more robust solution than Evernote's own home-cooked backend, if Evernote is interested,

21 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Evernote currently offers "robust back-end" encryption via the text encryption and I'm sure its feasible to extend this.

How is that related to my comment about the possibilities of a richer encryption solution now that Evernote has moved to Google Cloud? They aren't even on that solution any more.

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

The encryption at rest is a good feature but  not related to this discussion's request for Notebook encryption 

Why are you on my case?

I can tell you, being a newbie here, posting some relevant news that could affect Evernote's encryption offering, and being chastised by an 'expert' on what is and is not suitable for posting here, is quite un-welcoming. I'll keep my thoughts to myself from now on. Thanks for setting me straight.

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30 minutes ago, Don0819 said:

Why are you on my case?

 

30 minutes ago, Don0819 said:

How is that related to my comment about the possibilities of a richer encryption solution now that Evernote has moved to Google Cloud?

I'm not "on your case" and I'm sorry if my comments indicated that

Its only my opinion, but I just didn't see the data server move as having any impact on front end encryption

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10 hours ago, Don0819 said:
9 hours ago, Don0819 said:

I was just trying to post some relevant news that may provide a solution in the future. I wasn't asking for advice, thanks. You can find my post earlier, I have resolved this issue for now in my own case. I thought the movement to the Google Cloud may be of interest to others as it's clearly offering the potential for a more robust solution than Evernote's own home-cooked backend, if Evernote is interested,

 

I  think there's no doubt this was a relevant comment, as it concerns data encryption on Evernote. I was definitely interested in it. Personally, I don't find the comments that "Evernote is not implementing this", etc. to be helpful, since this is a feature request thread and the point of people voting/posting is to request the feature to be added.

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17 minutes ago, kingdc11 said:

I  think there's no doubt this was a relevant comment, as it concerns data encryption on Evernote. I was definitely interested in it.

Discussions do go off topic and could be of interest - there's no problem with that

As to being relevent; again its just my opinion - I don't believe the data server move is relevent to the the front end encryption request

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On 4/3/2013 at 11:51 PM, EvernoteLover9 said:

Evernote already has the ability to encrypt single notes.

 

@EvernoteLover9, I didn't know this. How useful, thanks. Encrypting a whole notebook would also be wonderful.

Edited by TdeV
Completing thought
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why is this such a difficult issue?  There must be a reason why Evernote will not do this. Is there an update of some kind Id like to store my passwords but when I open my app on my phone there is no log in required so anyone who has my phone and gets through the password can open up evernote and have access to everyone of my passwords!!! It's crazy!  Anyone know the status?

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On 2017-03-05 at 0:24 PM, jacquiagostinelli@gmail.co said:

when I open my app on my phone there is no log in

On my iPhone/iPad, if I log out after using Evernote, I have to log in with my password
If I close the Evernote window, I have to use a PIN/Fingerprint to access Evernote

Evernote has given no indication of planning to password protect Notebooks
I'm sure there are reasons why Evernote will not implement this feature

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If Evernote won't offer better security does anyone know of a similar product that does?  I will switch from my premium account immediately to gain confidence that my notes cannot be accessed if someone gets access to my computer or iPad.

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On 2017-04-17 at 9:37 AM, Hinds2020 said:

gain confidence that my notes cannot be accessed if someone gets access to my computer or iPad.

Have you tried password control on your computer and iPad; both at the computer and Evernote levels

 Evernote on the iPad also offers Passcode security; I control this using my fingerprint

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On 27/04/2017 at 9:59 AM, jz89 said:

This would be an absolute huge update.

Is there any word from evernote on this?

Evernote don't (usually) comment on whether or not they are adding a particular feature,  or (if they are) when it might be released.

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I would LOVE a passcode for individual notebooks. This would be great for sharing client information as well as having things like notebook one might have for tracking a weight loss with naked pics!! haha 

I've been wanting this for a while. Cmon evernote, this seems like an easy feature!

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