Evernote had a bit of a rough day yesterday, after it released its new privacy policy and users showed immediate concern over the idea they couldn’t fully opt-out of Evernote’s employees potentially viewing their stored content on the service. This morning, their CEO, Chris O’Neill, posted a message to the company blog to try and clarify.
O’Neill opened by suggesting that his company heard your concerns and then apologized for communicating the changes “poorly.” He also mentioned that your confusion over the matter was “understandable,” before diving into what has and hasn’t changed.
You should read his full blog post at the source link below, but here is the meat of what is and isn’t changing:
What’s Not Changing
Privacy has always been at the heart of Evernote, and we’re as committed as ever to upholding our Three Laws of Data Protection. These laws guide everything we do, and, I believe, represent industry-leading standards for privacy.In enforcing these laws, Evernote employees do not view the content of user notes except in very limited cases. Like other internet companies, we must comply with legal requirements such as responding to a warrant, investigating violations of our Terms of Service such as reports of harmful or illegal content, and troubleshooting at the request of users. The number of employees who are authorized to view this content is extremely limited by our existing policies, and I am personally involved in defining them.
What Is Changing
We believe we can make our users even more productive with technologies such as machine learning that will allow you to automate functions you now have to do manually, like creating to-do lists or putting together travel itineraries. Machine learning might sound like science fiction where computers make their own decisions. In reality, machines still need a human to check on them. To get there, Evernote data scientists need to do spot checks as they develop the technology. We’ll introduce this change on January 23, 2017, but you control whether or not your data is used for this purpose at any time.If you choose to participate in these experimental features, you’ll enjoy a more personalized experience. Select Evernote employees may see random content to ensure the features are working properly but they won’t know who it belongs to. They’ll only see the snippet they’re checking. Not only that, but if a machine identifies any personal information, it will mask it from the employee.
So two things here – 1) Evernote is suggesting that there are going to be times when they need to view your content no matter what, because they need to “comply with legal requirements such as responding to a warrant, investigating violations of our Terms of Service such as reports of harmful or illegal content, and troubleshooting at the request of users.” 2) Their machine learning really does require an employee to peak at content here and there to make sure it’s right and improving, but you can opt-out of that if you want.
To me, that leaves us exactly where we were yesterday, especially when you look at the line in the privacy policy under the “Do Evernote employees access or review my data?” section that says they may need to view content “for troubleshooting purposes or to maintain and improve the Service.” That’s a pretty vague reason that could be used in almost any situation to view a user’s content.
Look, I’m not here to tell you to stay with or leave Evernote, but understand that there are privacy concerns here and they don’t appear to be going away even with today’s clarification. Again, you’ll want to read the new privacy policy word for word and decide for yourself. You can read it here.
UPDATE: Evernote gave in, this evening, and has announced that it will not move forward with the proposed privacy policy. Details here.
Too little too late. The damage is done. Enjoy the ride, Evernote.
This has been scrapped, according to the CEO. Article on Fast Company.
I will never let International Paper Company take any of my old letters I wrote on paper I bought from them and put them in some cloud, haha!
This is the last straw. I have deleted all my evernotes and will never go back again. Haven’t been using it since the 2-device limit anyway. Google Keep is good enough.
https://media.giphy.com/media/ZNcZNn8XXtZxC/giphy.gif
It’s the 21st century. There’s no such thing as privacy any more. Get over it.
.
… and runs away … >;->
It’s a note taking application/service that is supposed to spread the gospel of being organized. Not only that, but they preach the word of collaboration and teamwork.
Instead, their legal/PR team did the most ridiculous thing imaginable by folks that were supposed to do the opposite from the get go if they listened to their own message they huff and puff about.
I counted myself out of recommending them when they started to market $300 messenger bags. It’s a company so far removed from reality, I can’t imagine a world that adopts them as being relevant.
“Peek.”
We use Android phones. Has anyone ever read samsung, lg, htc, lenovo, google, verizon privacy policies? I don’t think Evernote is the first or only entity to do this. Google (and Apple to some extent) is “learning” the piss out of everyone right now. Doesn’t make it right though.
*peek
Always used evernote, never opened keep, I am now a keep user. Bye, bye evernote, it was real.
simple solution, make all the systems these services live on hardened and encrypted. Can’t comply with legal requests if you never had the data to begin with!
Droid-life is the only tech web site that tackled this story with straight-forward, pragmatic, integrity…no scary sensationalism or one-sided opinion…just, here are the facts…make your own decision. Kind of a rare thing these days. Thanks guys!!
Sometimes we do decent work!
Can you take over mainstream media’s job too, please? 🙂
Google is paying 97$ per hour! Work for few hours and have longer with friends & family! !mj318d:
On tuesday I got a great new Land Rover Range Rover from having earned $8752 this last four weeks.. Its the most-financialy rewarding I’ve had.. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourself if you don’t check it
!mj318d:
➽➽
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I actually do think this clarifies a lot.
1) It explains the “limited circumstances” where Evernote may have access to my data. This is pretty standard boilerplate for any internet company hosting information.
2) It gives more information on exactly what Evernote can see if you don’t opt-out of the machine learning settings.
I’m in no way saying #2 is perfect. When it comes to privacy, I’d much rather it be opt-in than opt-out. I also can’t speak for anyone else’s use cases or privacy concerns. I do feel like this is enough to put down the pitchforks and let people make a reasoned decision on whether or not to stay.
People are OK with Google doing this, but when a small company does the same same thing they are outraged..smh.
the only scenario applicable in my life is that i keep some more private things in notes that i never keep in email
Isn’t Evernote a paid product
As opposed to Google or Facebook?
Not exactly, Evernote is just as free as Google or FB is. You have to option to go premium with more perks, but its not a requirement. Both Google and FB have paid product offerings as well.
Google gives you free services for your permission to essentially make your experiences better (and feed their A.I.) – But you don’t pay for that privilege
Also they give you free services so they can gather data for their closed ad platform, to make services better for advertising clients so Google can make billions off of our data. Yet they still charge $649 for a pixel phone.
You don’t need a Pixel to use any of those free services.
Still though most people will need to buy something to use these services on. Why take advantage of them on the hardware front too. It’s kind of a greedy way for people that offer these free services to do things. But we have the choice at least of not using their services. I dream of the day I can rid myself of intrusive Google products for better alternatives.
You don’t have to use Google services. It’s pretty simple. And if people don’t want to buy a $650 Android phone to use these services… They can buy a $100 android phone. Or a $1500 laptop. You know you need hardware to use these services right? What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.
Right I am saying they are taking advantage of people on both the software and hardware front, and the choices are limited. You can’t talk about privacy concerns and not talk about Google.
Your logic circle is shaped like a deflated basketball.
Its simple. Just about every modern company is viewing your content, and the main reason isn’t to make your experience better.
How many times are you going to say this?
I totally agree with you. I don’t really understand the uproar.
This assumes people use Google for any/all things, and that they don’t also use alternative services to break things up and stay away from practices like this.
A smaller company with a stronger privacy policy was probably what attracted them in the first place, until things changed.
Less to do with outrage.
welp, no problems over here on Google Keep…
I couldn’t find an explicit privacy policy for Google Keep, but this is from their general privacy policy (https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/)
For external processing
We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
For legal reasons
We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:
meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.
That doesn’t seem any different from what Evernote is saying, provided you opt-out of machine learning
The biggest issue is the wording from Evernote.
“for troubleshooting purposes or to maintain and improve the Service.” is basically a blanket reason. Google is specific about when they access your data, Evernote’s written policy allows employees to access your data at any time, as long as they can claim it was to improve the service.
I get that line is troubling, and full disclosure, I’m not a lawyer, but I interpreted Google’s external processing clause to be just as vague.
Googles wording is more binding.
“Maintain and improve the service” could be anything.
“Well you see, I read their notes to see if there were any misspellings, so I could consider how valuable a spell checking feature would be”
The biggest issue I find with the wording of Google is what constitutes “reasonably necessary”?
That’s a fair enough distinction, and the “reasonably necessary” was what got me with Google. They both sound *just* vague enough (moreso Evernote) to cover backsides.
c-ya…