It would appear Evernote's latest privacy policy allows them to read your notes to "improve learning" and people are rightfully pissed off. You had one job; take notes.

This was originally spotted on @Johill Twitter page with Evernote responding that you can opt out. That tells us you've already opted in if you didn't know any better. And you didn't because you weren't properly given the option.



According to their new privacy policy:

The latest update to the Privacy Policy allows some Evernote employees to exercise oversight of machine learning technologies applied to account content, subject to the limits described below, for the purposes of developing and improving the Evernote service.

This is primarily to make sure that our machine learning technologies are working correctly, in order to surface the most relevant content and features to you. While our computer systems do a pretty good job, sometimes a limited amount of human review is simply unavoidable in order to make sure everything is working exactly as it should.

Too many people use note taking applications for business and personal reasons, and Evernote should know better. Evernote says they are emailing all of their users, but again, it should be an option, not an email.

They do promise your data is safe with their "standard encryption," but if their engineers can read it, then it is no longer safe. Period. More on their security here.

What's this mean for you? In a world of security conscience consumers, the possible repercussions are the issue here. That said, you can opt out, and if you're taking simple notes, maybe it's not a concern. That's up to you.

If you want to move on, you can look at all the free alternatives, by popularity, at http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/sortpopularity/reminders_notes.html.