Can a notes app read my notes?

Three questions that settle it

• Can the company reset your password and give you your notes back? If yes, it can get to them — the reset works because it has a way in.
• Do any features run on the company’s servers using your note content — cloud AI, server-side search, web clipping into a shared index? Those features can see what they process.
• Does the app call itself end-to-end encrypted by default, or only “encrypted in transit and at rest”? The second means the company holds the keys.

“Can” is not “does”

A company that can read your notes usually has policies limiting when staff may look, and many say they do not use your content for advertising. Those are promises about behaviour. Encryption with a key the company does not have is a limit on capability, which does not depend on anyone keeping a promise.

Where Prevon sits

Prevon encrypts every note on your device with a key made from your 12-word Recovery Seed. We never see the seed, there is no password reset, and there is no account. In the current beta your notes never leave your device. Prevon is in a private beta and has not had an independent security audit. It is designed so that we cannot read your notes; until someone outside the company has checked that, “designed” is the accurate word.