Evernote has changed its mind, won't actually read your notes

Evernote has changed its mind, won't actually read your notes

Thanks, but no thanks.

Evernote has backtracked on a controversial update to its privacy policy that would have, in the name of machine learning, allow select employees to read small portions of user content. From the company's corporate blog:

In the coming months we will be revising our existing Privacy Policy to address our customers' concerns, reinforce that their data remains private by default, and confirm the trust they have placed in Evernote is well founded. In addition, we will make machine learning technologies available to our users, but no employees will be reading note content as part of this process unless users opt in. We will invite Evernote customers to help us build a better product by joining the program.

The issue stemmed from a portion of its updated privacy policy that would have gone into effect on January 23. "Select Evernote employees may see random content to ensure the features are working properly but they won't know who it belongs to, "the company said in an earlier blog post. "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."

That has now changed, but the damage may already be done.