Note-taking apps have exploded in popularity over the past decade. Giants like Evernote, OneNote, and Google Keep make it easy to digitally save personal thoughts, ideas, and memories.
However, concerns around data privacy have increased, with these apps storing troves of private information in the cloud.
This presents an opportunity for developers to build a secure, encrypted note-taking app to give users peace of mind. By using technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the front end and encryption on the back-end, it’s possible to create an app that keeps data private while still usable and accessible.
In this article, we’ll explore the landscape of note-taking apps, outline how to build secure client-side and server-side functionality, discuss challenges around encryption, and provide best practices for a privacy-first note app. Let’s dive in!
Note-Taking App Usage and Privacy Concerns
The note-taking app market has boomed, with an estimated 600 million people using these apps in 2022. Evernote leads with over 250 million users, followed by OneNote, Google Keep, and others. Annual revenues for top note apps exceed $500 million.
Up to 68% of note app users store personally identifiable information like passwords, addresses, and credit card numbers. This has led to growing worries over data privacy. A 2022 survey found that 80% of people were concerned their sensitive data may be hacked, leaked, or exploited by note app companies.
Indeed, note apps have suffered several embarrassing breaches. In 2016 over 68 million Dropbox accounts were compromised with encrypted passwords stolen.
In 2020, Evernote had to reset user passwords after detecting unauthorized access to its network.
Note apps can leave user data vulnerable without adequate encryption and security measures.
Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript
- Code Editor
To get started, fork the repo from here and follow along.
Building the Note App Front-end
The first step in creating a secure note app is building an intuitive front-end interface using standard web technologies. HTML provides the content structure and semantic tags to organize the UI into logical sections:
https://gist.github.com/Scofield-Idehen/91cbba84a853922f047a282efe164b73
https://gist.github.com/Scofield-Idehen/91cbba84a853922f047a282efe164b73
The provided HTML code creates the frontend structure and layout for a secure web-based note-taking application. This allows users to store personal notes online behind a password-protected encryption system safely.
At the top level, the code contains typical HTML boilerplate like the
and tags. The links to a CSS stylesheet for styling the page.Inside the
, a top navigation bar is defined with
