What to do if you’re an Evernote user (since they were hacked)

Evernote gets hacked, prompts us to look at the sensitive information we store in the program.

Evernote, the online note-taking service that gives you access to all of your notes on all of your devices through the cloud was hacked this week. In an attempt to keep the cyber hackers from stealing all of our notes, they quickly reset every user’s password. Here’s what you need to know:

If you use Evernote, you were hacked.
Your first step should be to visit Evernote.com and attempt to login. This will force a reset of your password.
Make sure that your password is 13+ characters and contains upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols and isn’t a word a hacker could find in a dictionary, on your Facebook page or by easily guessing.
This is the most important step! Consider what notes you are keeping in Evernote. Do you store other passwords there? Financial information or sensitive data about your business? Details about your kids, aging parents or yourself that you wouldn’t want made public?
If your Evernote contains these items, I would consider deleting them immediately and in the future, don’t store sensitive information in the cloud. This goes for Facebook, Instagram or any other cloud software that is built around being social, not around being secure.

There is really no way to know whether or not your note information has been compromised other than to keep tabs on your identity from this point on. The results from a cloud hack like this include potential identity theft, corporate espionage and other types of cyber crime.

John Sileo is CEO of The Sileo Group, an information economy think tank dedicated to helping organizations protect the private information that fuels their bottom line. His keynote speaking clients include the Pentagon, Visa, Homeland Security, Pfizer, the FDIC and hundreds of corporations and associations of all sizes. See his media appearances on 60 Minutes, Fox Business and Anderson Cooper.

Posted by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo in Cyber Data Security, Identity Theft Prevention.