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SERIOUS HELP: Can Evernote edit my Evernote Notes?


Juggy

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Hi people, this is a SUPER SERIOUS problem I need help with.

My question is: I store all of my personal notes in Evernote like my lecture notes, journal entries, future plans and my goals so I'm storing literally all of my personal information in the form of text in Evernote.

My very big worry is that a worker at Evernote can make changes to the notes I've made in my Evernote account and then make changes without me knowing. What's to prevent someone at Evernote from doing this?

I know it's possible to encrypt the text I create in Evernote, but I don't want to do this.

Any help would be great!

 

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As your data is not automatically encrypted by Evernote there are no guarantees. Evernote's three laws of data protection (https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/06/03/evernotes-three-laws-data-protection-update/) imply that there is some sort of corporate responsibility for privacy. However, that doesn't mean that you are protected from anyone who is able to penetrate their external security or somebody with malicious intent on the inside.

 

At the end of the day, it's your data and your responsibility - you should make sure that it is backed up and secure.

 

 

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Your reply is greatly appreciated!

How can I know that my data hasn't been altered without me knowing?

Is it possible for me to see different "versions" of the text stored in my Evernote Notes like "20th December 2014" and "1st January 2015" and "1st January 2016" and so on?

 

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@Speedie took the words out of my mouth - if you copy your synced (available on any device) notes into one or more Local Notebooks,  you'll have a (theoretically) uncorruptable copy to check content against.  Note that's NOT a backup - if your account is hosed,  you'll lose all your local notes too.

3 minutes ago, Juggy said:

how can I check the dates for when the Evernote Notes I've already created have been edited?

If you have any doubts about the content of a note,  check it against the Local Notebook copy.  You could keep your own dated copy notes for each update if they're not too frequent...

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Gazumped's suggestion (for Premium users) is the best way to check history for the SUPER SERIOUS problem. The history capture occurs once or twice each day. It is possible to upgrade to Premium for one month.

Example: here is what the history looks like (on a specific note that I edit each morning). Each edited version can be opened and read or imported. ... To be honest, I have used Evernote for 8 years, but I have never had a need for the history option.

 

Evernote history.png

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6 hours ago, Juggy said:

My very big worry is that a worker at Evernote can make changes to the notes I've made in my Evernote account and then make changes without me knowing. What's to prevent someone at Evernote from doing this?

Nothing really, but let's be serious here: why would anyone who doesn't know you intentionally ***** up your notes? Why would they waste their time? Even if you're keeping super-secret stuff in there, like your numbered Swiss bank account password or whatever, it would be crazy for them to change it and potentially tip you off; they'd just copy it. But hey, if they're that intent on doing messing with you, and they have access, maybe they can also ensure that the note history isn't engaged, so might never know anyways. And if you make backups (and you should), it's not a trivial thing to compare your backed up note database with your current note database. There's a certain amount of trust implicit when you hand over data to any cloud corporation. The alternative is getting a big shoebox (or thumb drive, I guess) and toting it around with you all the time, but that's just not very convenient. And that's what the cloud buys you: convenience.

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4 hours ago, Juggy said:

Thanks, but how can I check the dates for when the Evernote Notes I've already created have been edited?

Not to add to the paranoia, but if I was secretly editing your notes, I would make sure the dates are unchanged.  :)

As others pointed out, you can access the EN note history to see versions of your notes.
I maintain my own version of note in history in my backups (incremental backups of changed notes)
If I was concerned, I could possibly script a mass compare to identify differences.

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Security vs convenience - there always has to be a compromise. The more convenience you want, the less security you get. The more security you want, the less convenience you get. Or convenience is the enemy of security!

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On 8/12/2016 at 1:35 AM, Juggy said:

Hi people, this is a SUPER SERIOUS problem I need help with.

My question is: I store all of my personal notes in Evernote like my lecture notes, journal entries, future plans and my goals so I'm storing literally all of my personal information in the form of text in Evernote.

My very big worry is that a worker at Evernote can make changes to the notes I've made in my Evernote account and then make changes without me knowing. What's to prevent someone at Evernote from doing this?

I know it's possible to encrypt the text I create in Evernote, but I don't want to do this.

Any help would be great!

 

Hey @Juggy,

Security and privacy are extremely important topics for Evernote users, and for good reason. Evernote would like to provide a single service to manage your memories for many years. To achieve this, we must provide a very high level of system and data security while offering users a variety of choices to manage their own privacy requirements. Here is a high-level overview of some of the ways in which your data is protected by Evernote:

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. 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. 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. And, for all of our members, all note data is transferred over SSL, not just your login credentials.

We also offer enhanced privacy options that would not be available from services like email:

If you have sensitive text that you would like to remember (passwords, PINs, credit card numbers), you can encrypt that text in our Windows or Mac client using a passphrase that is never transmitted to Evernote. This encrypted text can only be decrypted and read on one of your devices after you've re-entered the encryption passphrase. The sensitive text is not readable on our servers or on your computer by anyone who does not know the passphrase.

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. This may allow a greater level of privacy for some notes, at the expense of the accessibility and reliability you would get from a private note on the service.

 

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Is it possible for me to add another "layer" of security to make it harder for people to edit my Evernote Notes? For example, it's possible to "encrypt text" in Evernote so in order for a user to edit the text they'd need to know the login password of the Evernote account and also know the password to decrypt the text.

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Haven't done it myself, but I believe I've seen posts where others have created a "data vault" and put their EN data into it.  Not sure how it works, but if it does it would help on the client side, not so much the server side though.

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15 hours ago, Juggy said:

Is it possible for me to add another "layer" of security to make it harder for people to edit my Evernote Notes? For example, it's possible to "encrypt text" in Evernote so in order for a user to edit the text they'd need to know the login password of the Evernote account and also know the password to decrypt the text.

Evernote has an encryption feature.  That should be sufficient to protect your note text
To edit your notes, someone would need access to your account, and the encryption password.

I see no need to go further than this for text.

This is documented at https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005547-How-to-encrypt-content-inside-Evernote

For example, On my Mac I select a section of text in my note and right click.  I get this menuScreen Shot 2016-08-15 at 8.21.45 AM.png

 

 

The result is a note that shows

Screen Shot 2016-08-15 at 8.27.25 AM.png

 

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9 hours ago, Juggy said:

Is it possible for me to add another "layer" of security to make it harder for people to edit my Evernote Notes?

Some folks will first create a password protected pdf and then attach that to their note.

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@Juggy - The chance that an Evernote employee would change one of your Notes is probably less than the chance that an employee at your bank would change the amount of money in one of your accounts. - - - By he way, did you pose the same type of question to your local bank branch manager?

The world is dominated by computers. Each person needs to decide if they are willing to play in it or whether it is too scary.

Yes, there are scammers and hackers out there, but you could get mugged walking down the street tomorrow night.

Don't be reckless, but, then again, don't lose sleep over this.

 

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10 hours ago, s2sailor said:

Some folks will first create a password protected pdf and then attach that to their note.

Actually, just converting your note to pdf would make it read only, and difficult to edit the notes.

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57 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Actually, just converting your note to pdf would make it read only, and difficult to update.

Yes, I only do this for notes that I plan on just storing and not later updating.

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On August 12, 2016 at 3:12 AM, Juggy said:

Thanks, but how can I check the dates for when the Evernote Notes I've already created have been edited?

To answer seriously.

In addition to viewing the dates in a note, I use top list view on my Mac; the dates are displayed in columns.

I also view my notes in update-sequence.  The latest updates are at the top of the list.

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