Surprise, and not exactly a pleasant one. Turns out that Evernote's privacy policy allows certain employees of this company to read the notes saved by users, without them being able to do anything to prevent it. In fact, if you do not want Evernote employees to access your content, the only thing left is to leave the service since there is no option not to give this consent.
As noted from 9to5Mac, it appears that this particular "no" privacy policy has already been in place for some time, however an upcoming update to its terms sheds even more light on the matter.
Evernote and privacy
According to this publication, Evernote clearly states that a limited group of your employees will be authorized to read the content of the notes that customers have stored in the system. It also clearly indicates that there is no way that customers can opt out.
The truth is Currently, if you use Evernote, your employees may already be able to access your notes under certain circumstances expressed in the current privacy policy, so this is nothing new:
Do Evernote employees access or review my data?
The following are limited circumstances in which we may need to access or review your account information or Content:
- We believe that our Terms of Service have been violated and confirmation is required or, otherwise, we will have an obligation to review the Content of your account as described in the Terms of Service;
- We have to do this to fix problems or to maintain and improve the Service;
- Whenever necessary to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Evernote and its users (including to protect against potential spam, malware, or other security concerns); or
- In order to comply with our legal obligations, such as responding to orders, court orders or other legal processes. We protect the privacy of the Content in your account and, where possible, we will notify you if we believe that we are required to comply with a third party request to obtain information about your account. Please visit our Authorities Information page for more information.
The novelty, and that will enter into force as of January 23, 2017 is a modification that allows some Evernote employees to monitor machine learning technologies applied to user account content. Essentially, this means that a small group of Evernote employees will be able to monitor the Evernote machine learning technology process to make sure it is working as expected.
Currently, Evernote is allowing customers to opt out of that machine learning. To do this, you need to log into your Evernote account and uncheck the box that refers to "Improved experience" from the account settings.
However, even if the user decides to abandon the "Enhanced Experience" and in effect, this prevents machine learning technologies and Evernote employees from processing your notes in order to improve that machine learning, human employees are still allowed personal access to user notes in certain circumstances, as reflected in the privacy policy clause I have quoted above that is currently operational.
This is the screenshot that I have taken of the Evernote privacy policy in Spanish, and which shows that indeed, the company's employees still retain some power to access user notes:
Current clause about the circumstances in which Evernote employees can access content stored by users
As rightly observed from 9to5Mac, "Evernote is not giving jurisdiction to all of its employees, as only a limited set will have the necessary privileges to access customer data".
Again, the debate about privacy is served. Does the change that Evernote is going to apply really differ so much from the current situation? Are the circumstances in which Evernote employees can access user notes sufficiently justified? From my point of view, and with this I am not saying that I position myself in favor of Evernote, only preventing or minimizing further damage could justify this interference, do the circumstances collected by Evernote respond to this criterion? I invite you to answer these questions and express your opinions, because the thing is that art through social networks.