Evernote – http://evernote.com – is an amazing tool.  It is a suite of software designed for note taking and storing notes.  A “note” can be any document or piece of text (formatted however you wish), a web page, pictures, etc.  Notes can have file attachments and can be sorted and tagged for ease of retrieval later.  The real beauty of Evernote is that you can access your notes across all of your devices including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Windows Mobile, etc.

Recently, Evernote was the victim of some “suspicious activities” and they made the decision to require password resets of all of its users. I’m not going to say Evenote got hacked… but Evernote got hacked.  It happens.  They’ve taken the appropriate actions and alerted their user base.  If by chance you’re an Evernote user and didn’t receive the notification, here it is:

Dear Evernote user,

Evernote’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service.

As a precaution to protect your data, we have decided to implement a password reset. Please read below for details and instructions.

In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost. We also have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed.

The investigation has shown, however, that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts, and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)

While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking steps to ensure your personal data remains secure. This means that in an abundance of caution, we are requiring all users to reset their Evernote account passwords. Please create a new password by signing into your account on evernote.com.

After signing in, you will be prompted to enter your new password. Once you have reset your password on evernote.com, you will need to enter this new password in other Evernote apps that you use. We are also releasing updates to several of our apps to make the password change process easier, so please check for updates over the next several hours.

As recent events with other large services have demonstrated, this type of activity is becoming more common. We take our responsibility to keep your data safe very seriously, and we’re constantly enhancing the security of our service infrastructure to protect Evernote and your content.

There are also several important steps that you can take to ensure that your data on any site, including Evernote, is secure:

• Avoid using simple passwords based on dictionary words
• Never use the same password on multiple sites or services
• Never click on ‘reset password’ requests in emails – instead go directly to the service

Thank you for taking the time to read this. We apologize for the annoyance of having to change your password, but, ultimately, we believe this simple step will result in a more secure Evernote experience. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Evernote Support.

The Evernote Team

I have to say that as a user of this service I appreciate this type of message.  The bottom line is their systems were compromised and now they’re dealing with it.  I appreciate the fact that they came out and owned it and they didn’t try and cover it up.  They also give some good basic tips when it comes to password security.

Got questions about Evernote or other file sharing services?  Need some help getting one of these services set up and configured?  Let us know… we’d love to help!