Evernote has grown amazingly fast in recent months. It feels like we’re getting closer and closer to fulfilling our goal of being the permanent, trusted and ubiquitous place for all the world’s memories. Each of those words is very important to us, so I thought this was a good time to clearly spell out our core guiding principles for how we treat your data.
Everything we do at Evernote follows these three basic rules:
- Your Data is Yours
- Your Data is Protected
- Your Data is Portable
1. Your Data is Yours
We do not own your data. Putting notes and other content into Evernote does not change its ownership or copyright status. If the data was yours to begin with, it remains yours after you put it in Evernote.
By putting data in Evernote, you give us permission to do certain things with it for the purpose of running our service. For example, you give us permission to back it up, send it on a network, index it for searching, display it on your phone, etc. Some of these operations may require us to send your data to our normal business partners–such as a network operator–that we have contracted with to provide parts of the Evernote Service.
Other than giving us the permission to perform these limited operations so we can run the Evernote Service, you retain all the rights to your data.
2. Your Data is Protected
Everything you put into Evernote is private by default. We never look at it, analyze it, share it, use it to target ads, data mine it, etc.–unless you specifically ask us to do one of these things. Our business model does not depend on “monetizing” your data in any way. Rather, it depends on building trust and providing a great service that more and more people choose to pay for.
There are features in Evernote which allow you to publish and share some of your notes with others, but these are totally optional and whether or not you use them is up to you. If you choose to connect your Evernote account with one of our many partners, you may be giving the partner access to your data. We will tell you how the partner application will access your account and you can turn off access whenever you want.
In addition, we take many precautions to protect your data from accidental loss and theft. Everything you put into an Evernote synchronized notebook is stored in our secure data center with multiple redundant servers, storage devices and off-site backups. Communication between Evernote clients and our servers is encrypted via industry-standard SSL. We don’t store your password on our servers and no one at Evernote will ever ask you for it.
3. Your Data is Portable
There is no data-lock in Evernote. We are committed to making it easy for you to get all of your data into, and out of, Evernote at any time. Our desktop software lets you export all of your notes and content in human-readable HTML as well as a fully documented machine-readable XML format. We also have a full, free API that lets you access all of your data. Our philosophy is that if you’re confident that you can leave Evernote at any time, then you’ll be confident enough to want to stay.
For more information, please read the Evernote Privacy and Security blog post by our CTO, Dave Engberg and our Terms of Service.
243 Comments
Eric
I agree with much which has been written above. However, I have used database software for this kind of information for a long time (20 years – the cloud is the only new factor). My growing worry is that in relegating the task of remembering some key pieces of information to computers I am actually losing the capacity to remember necessary detail myself. Instead, I am tending to be addicted to the medium to find any particular bit of information. There are many situations (such as in conversation, or e.g. standing in front of an immigration officer) where you don’t have the opportunity to refer to your devices. While I will continue to use my databases such as Evernote, I have in fact started back handwriting in a journal in order to maintain a better overview of disparate bits of information. It seems to me there is something still really important about the slower process of handwriting which better communicates critical things you need to remember. This slower formulation/reviewing process which is vital to the conversion of information in short-term memory to long-term memory. The reviewing process tends to be skipped or short-circuited if you can file something with a click of a mouse, promising yourself to look at it later…. but never getting around to it because Evernote and its ilk are good at accumulating, but bad at sorting and reviewing. When your database is big (mine is 100MBytes), finding any bit can be slow. Evernote still doesn’t have any inbuilt properly heirarchical system for storage; that’s left up to the user. N.B. and beware. I suspect there is much scope for researching the effect of computer interfaces on the mental processes of information overload, the lack of time given to review — and Alzheimers.
Mihkel L.
Interesting ideas, certainly notworthy.
DR Crunk
Could you repeat that Eric, I can’t remember what we were talking about….
Hope
Paperwork has caused me to be a pack-rat. I save everything…articles, quotes, journal entries. You name! Now, I’m a computer pack-rat. That’s okay. because it doesn’t matter if I ever look at it again – my heirs are grateful as they won’t have to sift through mounds of papers at my demise. And I can throw out at least one filing cabinet. Thanks to Evernote.
Melody
AMEN!!!! Maybe I will find my office floors and closets again.
Brendan
“We will tell you how the partner application will access your account and you can turn off access whenever you want.”
I can’t find the option to turn off access. Are you able to advise me where I can find the setting?
Nicolas
I love it!
Barry Morris
I don’t see anything here or in the terms of service that explain why you would want or need to collect data from my contacts files. The latest update to my phone app describes that as one of the capabilities the app has. Can you clarify this for me? Does Evernote obtain and store data about my contacts?
Constance Cumbey
I love and appreciate your product, BUT HI-LIGHTING capacities would be lovely, e.g. a yellow high-lighter, etc.
Thank you,
Constance E. Cumbey
Thatcher
I have to second this. I would like to have a highlighter and a bubble feature.
rozario
Sir Thank you very muc for the wonderful app you guys hv created. It is really useful. AND ALL THE VEST TO YOU. TAKE CARE
ROZARIO FROM INDIA
imeshell
Well articulated, Phil. Keep up the good work!
유복균
Thank you!!
Inez-Santiago Chile
Just started using it–AWESOME!!!!
Lawrence
Funny that I should catch this entry when I’ve concerns about data protection on my own device. Ipad to be exact. I share my Ipad with my wife and my 19 month old, so I log out of Evernote once I’m done with it. Unfortunately, restarting the app, all I have to do is to touch OK and it re-login automatically from the saved login and password. I don’t seem to be able to forget the login or password. Don’t think my notes is safe from my 19 month old!
philippe
Bonjour philippe
andy
evernote please encrypt data
Peter Grant
my local notes contain all my passwords, etc. I simply don’t dare to put this on an IPAD, etc. because there is essentially no security. I think you should be able to protect a local notebook with a serious security code, and be able to access the notebook with that security code across platforms. It is not Evernote I am worried about, it is losing control of my portable device.
Thatcher
Yes an encryption module would be greatly appreciated.
李彥廷
Good
Declan332
Evernote is amazing. No paper left in office. Purchase orders, delivery notes, invoices, records. All indexable & searchable.
Absolute Godsend for a small business.
Have same folders in Sugarsync just in case but good to see that Evernote wish to assure it’s client base regarding security, ownership etc. Love this service.
CB
“Our philosophy is that if you’re confident that you can leave Evernote at any time, then you’ll be confident enough to want to stay.”
This is brilliant, and I thank you. I’m currently considering a messy divorce from a popular photo site because they don’t ‘get’ this.
Alvin Saldanha
Evernote amazes me. Period.
kinbooye
OK
Jessica Sung
New try
Roderick Tanguay
Not really qualified to comment yet, though what I have seen so far looks good. Take’s me ages to find my way around a sight, wish I had a convenient expert at my shoulder.
Will make a comment after I have found my way around. Rod
Shikera
Now that you product is so popular, can u reduce the price??? Just because i worked for an entire summer to save and buy myself an ipad means i can afford the 45us or even 5us every month to use the most useful app to take notes in university. right now im maxed out on my data and still have 15days to go.
Cstein
I would never use this to take my notes for college classes! You need the brain memory of writing down what you hear to add to your learning. THis is what is wrong with this generation.
I am a teacher and students don’t write; therefore, they don’t remember!!
Do yourself a HUGE favor and hand write your notes for classes – you will do MUCH better in your classes.
Then do yourself another favor, clear our your Evernotes, and use the free version with a smaller capacity for only the most important stuff.
Adam
I completely disagree.
When I was a student, there was no option. Nobody except executives had mobile phones. Laptops were prohibitively expensive and in any case their batteries wouldn’t last long enough for a day’s lectures. So like everyone else I wrote longhand and filed the notes in lever arch files. Filed them together with the stapled bundles of photocopied handouts of the OHP slides – no motor memory of those!!
They all weighed a ton and so you could not take all your notes to all lectures; so you had to be selective. That mean time filing, unfiling, sorting, copying out, which could be better spent learning and maybe even understanding the stuff! And then there was always some stuff you wanted to refer to and couldn’t because it wasn’t in the bundle of papers you’d brought that day.
The motor memory thing of handwriting never ever worked for me except in rare circumstances. What did work more was mindmapping but that’s another topic. Any little extra “memorability” (sic) from writing the notes longhand would be more than offset by the godsend of having the whole lot present on one or more little devices that were handy to use, to add to, to review, to search. We geeks on a computer science course used to fantasise about such a sci-fi future.
“Handwriting = memorising” is thankfully a concept that disappeared long ago… or so I had thought! Maybe you also encourage retention by “percussive reinforcement”!
Ros
I couldn’t disagree more
Many studnets benefit from typing their notes. I work with disabled students and services like Evernote are a god send. It allows them to type their notes, not worry about spelling etc. and they are completely searchable after the event!
There is absolutely no evidence to support your claim that typing notes is somehow less memorable than handwriting.
I would have loved evernote at University and it would have made my life as a dyspraxic/dyslexic student so much easier. I typed my notes and retained as much as my colleagues handwriting with added benefit that my notes were legiable, easily corrected and fully searchable. Evernote would have made the whole thing so much easier.
Dan Richey
Thanks for the post. I have wondered about 1. How secure my data is, and 2. How easy and accessible it is for me to get your data off of your server if I ever need to.
Marie-Paule
Bonjour j’ai un problème le programme Evernote le problème c’est mon adresse émail et mon mots passe ça dit que adresse et mots est non valide aider s,i,p, merci
Peter
The Evernote web clipping tool has permission to access the user’s data on all websites. This includes bank statements, facebook, anything and everything. In addition to saving data of the user’s choosing, does the Evernote web clipper glean data from the user’s browser without explicit instructions from the user to do so and, if so, what does Evernote do with this data?
DR Crunk
Read the terms of service and the founders’ blog posts.
thartharkyee0
Thanks
Gurpreet Singh
Thank you for the words of encouragement. I simply love all that is Evernote.
Lauu
good!
Fred
I’m puzzled … you say my data should be portable, yet since you upgraded your servers on April 4th, no WebOS user has been able to access evernote. That doesn’t sound very portable to me.
You broke your own system, and despite numerous support requests, we’re all given useless answers.
Since you claim its easy to get into my data – please show me how using my Touchpad …
Maria
I love you very, very much!
Gheorghe
Anneyye Allard
Bonjour!
c’est domage que Evernote soit qu’a anglais.
Bonne jounée!
Jean
Can anyone write up a short explanation of the basic differences between Evernote and OneNote? Thanks.
DR Crunk
I hate answering questions that people could easily answer for themselves with a Google search and 10 minutes of research.
Download a free trial of OneNote and take it for a spin. Do the same with Evernote. You will find that they’re both good at capturing “stuff” that you want to save and catalog, and are somewhat interchangeable. Evernote is more free-form whereas OneNote is more structured along the lines of MS Office. I find myself using OneNote when I’m researching a topic for (say) a legal brief or article that I’m writing – the built-in hierarchy of notebook/section/pages makes sense in that case. I use Evernote for everything else. It’s much easier to randomly get “whatever” into Evernote from wherever you happen to be and/or be using to do it. I could ditch OneNote and convert all of that to Evernote if push came to shove… but OneNote has one large advantage if you’re using Microsoft Office – and that is it’s very easy to quickly convert something in OneNote to a PowerPoint presentation – a Word document – a Publisher file, etc. In other words – it’s a good “helper app” for the rest of Office.
BTW -there’s one more player – Zoho notes (www.zoho.com) that is yet another variation on a theme. Google has some similar tools as well. The whole “second brain in the sky” thing is seductive as we get busier (and older -more forgetful).
I firmly believe Evernote is going to become a staple of living/working digitally – the fact that they’ve opened it up to developers who are building tools to extend it is testament to that. Listen to the founders’ podcast -it’s very insightful re: where all the Evernote stuff is headed.
One last thing – Evernote has the huge advantage of being able to identify and index handwritten notes and other text embedded in signs and graphics. That is a game-changer- OneNote has nothing even remotely close to that.
Now go check it out for yourself and see if you agree with me. Best of luck to you.
최신재
hi
宝儿
Love. Feer
Lorrie a mcgee
Cool
Sung yoonjung
Thank you!!
deepak sharma
i am in love with site …. keep us updated
Luigi Di Lallo
Ok
Pam
Looking forward to using Evernote!
차주만
hi.
María Teresa Díez C.
I agree.