Be Warned - Evernote can steal your notebooks and change your account with out approval from the end user

[Lisa S 2]

I just had a bad experience where Evernote allowed my company to take over my personal Evernote account - just because I associated a work email to it.   They changed my account and took over personal notebooks that I have had well prior to ever starting the company that I just left. 

 

This is terrifying that Evernote would allow this to happen and never once try and contact me.   I can see that it happened as it is in the logs and it just pisses me off to no end...figured I would warn others of this breach in trust.

 

Oh and shocker that you can't find a phone number to actually talk to someone about this.

 

Be warned!!!

[DvirG 12]

Hi Lisa,

That sound to me like a simple password reset that was done by your sys admin who has access to your old email address at the company you've left.

This is not Evernote's fault but rather bad etiquette of your previous employer.

I feel for you and understand your anger, but the employer should be the one to blame.

Just a thought, of course.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Yikes Indeed this would be disconcerting. However, this seems like a very odd situation and without more information it is difficult to understand exactly what occurred. 

With respect to the phone number, indeed there is none, however, premium and business users can contact support using the Chat system, which is generally pretty quick. 

 

While I definitely think this is an issue for Evernote Support to address, some more info might help us fellow users better understand what you experienced.

 

Were you part of a company that used Evernote Business? 

 

I just had a bad experience where Evernote allowed my company to take over my personal Evernote account - just because I associated a work email to it.   They changed my account and took over personal notebooks that I have had well prior to ever starting the company that I just left. 

 

It is not clear why using your work email on your Evernote account would grant your company (or any third party) access to your account. Someone from your company would need to have your Evernote password in order to access your Evernote account. They would also need to know which email address you used with Evernote. This would be the case whether you used your work email or not (since anyone who knows your email and password would have access, which is true of almost all online accounts). 

 

Now, the only exception would be if you were an employee on a business account, your company would have control over business notebook, but not personal notebooks. As an employee in a business account, your employer/administrator cannot see your personal notebooks. 

 

When you say "they changed my account...", is the "they" your company, or Evernote?

 

 

This is terrifying that Evernote would allow this to happen and never once try and contact me.   I can see that it happened as it is in the logs and it just pisses me off to no end...figured I would warn others of this breach in trust.

 

 

 

It is not clear how Evernote allowed this to happen. Some more details might help explain this. Lacking details, I'll just speculate: Evernote lets whoever enters the correct username/email and password access the content of that account, since this is the most popular way applications and services verify users' identities. Ideally you are the only person who knows both of those things. If for some reason you shared your username and password with someone else, this is beyond Evernote's control. Did someone at your company know: 1) that you used Evernote; 2) which email address you used with your Evernote account; and 3) the password you used with Evernote? 

 

Is it possible that you installed  the Evernote application on a work computer that other employees at your company have access to? In this case, unless you explicitly log out of the Evernote application, or unless you have your own, password protected user account on the computer, it is possible that other computer users could have access to your Evernote content simply by opening the Evernote application.

[gbarry 2,658]

Looks like you've submitted a support ticket--I've gone ahead and bumped you in the queue to make sure you are handled quickly.

 

To be clear, had you originally associated your personal email account to your personal Evernote account, and then switched it to your businesses email? Were you on Evernote Business?

 

Your old business should not actually have access to your account or any of the info in it, unless you were working on Evernote Business--and in that case only what was in a Business notebook would be associated with the business. The rest would be associated with your personal Evernote account.

 

While we have support checking out your ticket, I would second XDvir's reply.

[Lisa S 2]

So the account was always under my personal email, and it allowed me on Friday to remove my work email that I had added to this account without an issue.   I logged a ticket with support since you can't find a phone number to talk to anyone from Evernote to address.    I can see in the log files the date/time when they re-initiated my account which then added a 0 to my account name -- hence then eliminating my ability to get into all my other notebooks.

 

What I can't determine is what actually caused them to do this to my account.   I hope to find out once support calls me or response to my ticket that I logged.

 

 

[Lisa S 2]

I was never a Evernote Business user.  I was an Evernote personal user that upgraded to premium on my own personal credit card.   I just happened to use the account for work.   I can see in the log files what seemed to have happened and in talking to my ex co-workers they can still see all my shared folders, etc.   So on some parallel universe my original User id still exists but I can't see it since Evernote added a zero to the end of my user name today.

 

Thanks for bumping me up in the queue...I am anxious to see how and why this ever happened...so it doesn't happen to anyone else.

[Lisa S 2]

Can someone tell me about how long it takes to have support respond to tickets?  I logged two tickets yesterday - 1 account access issues and 2 lost premium access, so I feel like I am running blind to if someone is actually looking into my issues or not.   I paid for premium and would love to online chat but they screwed up my account so bad that I have zero access to anything anymore.

 

Someone Help!!!!   I'm really starting to dislike this product.

[gazumped 11,652]

Sorry that you're still waiting,  but it does take a little while to investigate an issue.  You have the forum Admins on the case,  so should be getting some feedback soon. 

[gbarry 2,658]

Have you been receiving support request emails? We've sent followups three (sorry, miscount, two) times today and once yesterday requesting additional information.

 

Would try checking your spam or other inboxes--if you receive an email, reply directly to that email to get back the info our techs need to support you.

[Lisa S 2]

So here is what happened and how I got it resolved:

• I had a friend of mind that is also an evernote premium user access her live chat and get support (online chat) to work my tickets (since my premium access was MIA)
• That support person was able to quickly figure out what happened after she reviewed my log files that I attached to my ticket

What I didn't realize and it doesn't seem to be clearly documented is when I removed my work email from my profile...it was more that just removing an email, Evernote actually asked me to replace that email with another email - I don't have a lot of email addresses hanging around so I forgot I ended up putting another version of my mac address to replace the work email - since there was no clear email confirmations on this action it got confusing.   The other thing that happens in replacing an email is it is really replacing accounts so when I put this new email in to replace my work email - it moved 100% of that account and more into this new email address and separated it off my primary account.

 

Once support to see what happened in the logs, I just had to go in and add another account into my primary and put the new email address in and all my files and notebooks were back.

 

My question is why if I was just replacing one email for another did Evernote split this accounts apart and cause me to merge them together again.   One simple task of email replacement really was account creation, account replacement and account separation...so confusing.    There also needs to be a better way to actually contact Evernote support...hey if you find that I'm not really a paid premium user - charge me...but when premium users are having issues and there is zero easy way to reach someone...frustration tends to happen.

 

Thanks to my friend and her support person - they got this all fixed...and I never did get a single email from evernote support through this process.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

It isn't clear why it separated your account. I've switched email addresses in the past and it was painless, no splitting/joining/adding/appending of data or anything... just a different email to type in whenever I logged in. 

 

It sounds like perhaps somehow there was a mis-step when you switched your email address... perhaps you inadvertently created a second account along the way. 

 

As for not receiving an email from support, it looks like they tried to contact you on several occasions after you submitted a support ticket. Did you check your spam/junk folder?

 

Contacting support shouldn't be difficult. All users can contact support. Free users only get support for a select few issue types (such as data loss, billing, account issues), and also get very slow responses. Normally you receive a confirmation email pretty much immediately after submitting your support ticket, and you can reply to this email to add additional details or check the status (usually checking the status is futile, but squeaky wheel, right!). If you have something very urgent, you could always subscribe to premium for one month (~$5 depending on where you live), and use the chat feature. If you want premium, even just for support services, this is something you will have to initiate yourself.

 

Sounds like a frustrating ordeal! I am relieved to see that it looks like nothing was lost and no unauthorized access was actually given. I hope that now that things are settled you are able to return to being productive!

[gazumped 11,652]

If part of the problem was that the account didn't have a correct email address,  this would probably explain why Evernote's emails weren't getting through.  Evernote accepts Gmail addresses (some sites don't) so if in doubt,  grab a new address from Google to use as a temporary contact...