Evernote in a surprising move will implement a new change in its privacy policy in January 2017 that will give access to the stored notes of their users to the company employees.
Evernote Revoked The Policy As It Was Proposed
The company has oficially revoked the proposed privacy policy changes. The company disclosed that they are going to make available the machine learning technology to the users. However the employees will be able to access the notes if the user has explicitly given them permission through an opt-in toggle setting.
To read the blog post on Evernote’s blog click here.
Evernote’s New Privacy Policy Changed In a Surprise Move
The popular note taking and diary utility Evernote has surprised and shocked many of their users and customers by publicly notifying everyone that they are making changes in their privacy policy. Starting from January 2017 when the changes will take place the company will allow company employees to read the uploaded content and use it to improve their machine learning technology. This is not a major change as they have been able to access data before. Various users have publicly marked the new changes as outrageous on the popular social media channels.
Evernote allows concerned users a few actions that can remedy their concerns:
- If the users want to take advantage of the machine learning technologies but disallow access to certain notes they can use encryption options to protect select data.
- Concerned users can opt-out of the machine learning technology by navigating to their account settings and unchecking the “Allow Evernote to use my data to improve my experience” option. However Evernote stresses that this may limit some of the offered extras that users can enjoy with the new technology.
In addition to that the Evernote team has stated that ”And please note that you cannot opt out of employees looking at your content for other reasons “.
Journalists from Forbes have reached out to the Evernote team to discover further information about the change. According to them the employees who access user data to it solely to verify that the machine learning algorithm is working as planned.
The company still takes measures to protect the privacy of their customers even when such changes are being implemented.
Here is an excerpt from their support page:
What does Evernote do to protect my information?
We work hard at all levels of the company to make sure the data you store in Evernote remains yours, and is only shared when you decide to share it. To achieve this, we have in place a number of security controls and policies, including:
Access Minimization: We strictly limit the number of Evernote employees who have access to user data to those who need this access to perform one of the functions listed within our Privacy Policy (under the section, “Information Access and Disclosure”).
Training and Education: Employees who have access to user data are subject to background checks and receive specific security and privacy training at least annually to ensure they are up to date on the latest privacy and security requirements and standards.
Data Security Measures: We only allow user data to be stored in environments we consider secure. Access to these secure environments, and the data stored within them, is limited to only authorized employees, and we use strong authentication measures to protect that access. We regularly test our web service code to look for security bugs that might allow an attacker to gain access to an account. And we employ teams outside Evernote to actively test our security protections and find weaknesses we may not be aware of. If you’d like to learn more about the ways we protect user data, check out our security page.
