Real situations, real privacy

Why the everyday cases are the ones that matter

Almost nobody loses private photos to an attacker who broke encryption. They lose them the ordinary way: a phone handed over unlocked, a trade-in that was never properly wiped, a shared iCloud account nobody thought about, a repair that required the passcode.

That distinction changes what a defence has to do. Against a remote attacker, a strong passcode is most of the answer. Against the everyday cases, the passcode is already surrendered — you handed the phone over, or the shop needed it, or the photos synced somewhere before you thought to stop them. What helps is a second boundary inside the device: photos that stay encrypted whether or not the phone is unlocked, and that never pass through the Camera Roll on their way in.

Each page below takes one of those situations, describes what iOS does and does not protect on its own, and explains where a vault changes the outcome. Where the built-in tools are genuinely sufficient, they say so.

If you want the underlying design instead of the situations, the security page covers how the encryption works, and the comparisons cover how it differs from other vault apps.