One common comment about Evernote is that the service is awesome, but people wish that it supported encryption of notes or notebooks. To address this, Evernote introduced the ability to encrypt text inside a note, but for those that want something a bit more comprehensive, here is a 2 part guide on how to encrypt Evernote.
Today we’ll look at Microsoft Windows, and tomorrow how to encrypt Evernote on Mac OSX.
Encrypting Text Inside A Note
The “official” way to do encryption in Evernote is to simply encrypt any sensitive text in a note. This is easily done in the Evernote UI
Step 1: Select the text you want to Encrypt.
Step 2: Right-click and choose Encrypt Selected Text.
Step 3: Make up a passphrase that you will later use to decrypt this text. Note: This phrase is never sent to Evernote’s servers, and they have no way of retrieving it for you. If you forget it, you are out of luck. Also, this text can not be decrypted in mobile or web Evernote – just in the Windows client.
Step 4: Your text will now show as encrypted in Evernote. To decrypt it, click it and enter your passphrase from Step 3.
Encrypting Your Evernote Database
OK, it’s time to get a little geeky. Evernote itself does not support database encryption, so we are going to use a free program called TrueCrypt to make an encrypted drive that Windows will treat like any other drive or USB key. The difference is, whatever you save to it will be encrypted.
We’re then going to tell Evernote to put our files in there instead of the C: drive.
Ready? Let’s do it!
Note: This involves moving your Evernote files. If you’re not comfortable with that, I recommend you do not proceed. I’m not responsible in the unlikely event that your Evernote files are lost or something.
Step 1: Download and install TrueCrypt. Go to http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads and download the latest Windows version. Save it to your hard drive and install it.
Step 2: Start up TrueCrypt. You’ll see a blank list of drive letters. Click Create Volume.
Step 3: Hit Next for Create an Encrypted File Container and Next for Standard TrueCrypt Volume.
Step 4: Hit Select File and choose where on your hard drive you want your TrueCrypt image to be saved. You can think of it as a container that you are going to put other files into. For simplicity, I will put it on the Desktop and call it EvernoteVolume.
After hitting Save, hit Next when you are back at the Wizard.
Step 5: Choose the type of encryption you want. If you’re not sure, the default should be fine. Just hit Next
Step 6: Enter the size you want your new TrueCrypt drive to be. Obviously you will want to make this somewhat bigger than your existing Evernote database to allow for growth. To find out what your existing database size is, go to Tools and then Options in Evernote and then hit Open Database Folder.
Mine is about 77 Megs so I will put 150 Megs for my TrueCrypt volume. Why not. Hit Next.
Step 7: Enter a volume password that will be used when you mount this drive. It doesn’t make sense to go to all this trouble of encrypting Evernote and then choosing a weak password, so choose a good one. Hit Next.
Step 8: If you know that you need to change the Volume Format, do so here. Otherwise try the defaults.
Step 9: Hit OK and then Exit. You’ve got a TrueCrypt volume! Yeah!!
Step 10: Go back to your main TrueCrypt window where all the drive letters are. Pick which drive letter you will want to use. For this example I will use N, but use what you want.
Step 11: Click Select File and navigate to the file you specified back in Step 4.
Step 12: Hit Mount and enter the password that you created in Step 7.
Step 13: Check your Windows Explorer. You now have a new drive! Yeah!
Step 14: At long last, go into Evernote and got to Tools and then Options. Click Change to change the location of your Evernote files.
Step 15: Navigate to your N drive, or whatever drive letter you chose in Step 10. Hit OK. Evernote will now move all of its files to your new, encrypted drive.
You’re done! Awesome job!
One thing to note about this – from this point forward, you will need to have your TrueCrypt drive mounted before you start Evernote – otherwise Evernote won’t be able to find its files!
Over at 40Tech they have a handy TrueCrypt/Evernote batch file that might make this easier for you. I have not tried it myself, but give it a go if you’d like.
Do you have any other tips for encrypting your Evernote files? Leave them in the comments.
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Hi,
I guess you can remove the older database in C:Documents and Settings<your_username>Local SettingsApplication DataEvernoteEvernote ?
Is there a reason evernote did not delete the old one when moving your database location ?
Thanks.
That's a good question. Not sure why it didn't. I'd say you could exit Evernote, copy the folder somewhere else, start Evernote up. If it doesn't have any problems, you can delete it?
That's what I did. No problem so far. Nice tutorial. Thanks
That's a good question. Not sure why it didn't. I'd say you could exit Evernote, copy the folder somewhere else, start Evernote up. If it doesn't have any problems, you can delete it?
So bottom line, anyone with access to the servers at Evernote can read my stuff?
Well, theoretically that is my understanding, but hopefully that list of people with access to the servers is quite small.
Thank you. But it's 2011. So much for Evernote. I don't care how many cute bells and whistles it has. It's not secure so it's not worth my time. Furthermore, since security apparently wasn't even an implied design consideration, its developers can kiss my ass for the idiots they are. But I'm sure they'll attract other useful idiots to their product.
I think PreSalesClient is correct. Truecrypt protects information on your hard drive, but not evernotes enroute to their servers or on their servers or enroute back to your other computers.
Seems like encrypted text does not survive roundtrip to/from web client if there is any editing of the note.
Really! I didn't know that. I'll have to test it out. Thanks for the heads up.