Sealby
A private encrypted vault for iPhone
Keep photos and videos outside Photos, encrypted on your device, with multiple PIN-linked vaults and a private camera.
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Are photo vault apps safe? Seven red flags before you trust one
The photo-locker category is crowded, and a lot of it is a PIN screen over an ordinary folder. Here are seven concrete red flags to check before you move anything sensitive into any vault app — including ours.
Private photo vaults
Hidden album
Good for casual privacy
Easy and built in, but the files remain inside Photos and its iCloud sync.
Locked Notes
Useful for a few images
More protection, but awkward for albums, browsing and video.
Ordinary vault apps
Protection varies
Some encrypt your files. Others only place a PIN screen in front of them.
Red flags 1–3: the business model shows through
One: ads inside the app. Ad SDKs exist to collect and transmit; whatever the privacy policy says, a data pipeline lives inside your vault app. Two: a required account for a purely local job. Local encryption needs no identity; accounts exist for the vendor’s funnel, and every account is one more place your usage is recorded. Three: "recover your PIN by email." Genuine encryption cannot be recovered by a support desk — an app offering it is telling you it holds keys to your content.
Red flags 4–5: the technology is a mystery
Four: no encryption details anywhere. "Military-grade" and a padlock icon are not documentation. A trustworthy vault names the algorithm, where keys come from, and what happens on wrong PINs — details a fake cannot fill in convincingly. Five: cloud upload you did not ask for. If files leave the device "for backup" or "for processing" by default, the vault’s security became the vendor’s server security, and you were not asked.
Red flags 6–7: the details nobody checks
Six: plaintext leftovers. Imported photos that remain in the camera roll without a warning, thumbnails visible in the app switcher, previews readable in a computer backup — sloppiness where content escapes the encryption boundary. Seven: no stated limits. Every security tool has failure modes; a vendor that lists none is either unaware of them or hiding them. Honest documentation of limits is the strongest single trust signal this category has.
Two minutes with a vendor’s website answers most of these. If the answers are missing, the answer is no.
Quick answers
Are calculator vault apps safe?
The disguise says nothing about the storage. Some calculator vaults encrypt properly; many store files unencrypted in app storage where a connected computer or forensic tool reads them directly. Judge the encryption documentation, not the camouflage — and remember the disguise itself is well-known to anyone who searches a phone.
Why is PIN recovery by email a bad sign?
Because it proves the encryption keys do not depend on your PIN alone. If the vendor can restore access, a copy of the keys (or of your content) exists outside your control — available to their support staff, their next breach, and anyone with legal leverage over them.
Is App Store review a guarantee the vault is real?
No. Review checks policy compliance, not cryptography. Apps with millions of downloads have shipped unencrypted "vaults" for years — download counts measure marketing, not security.
How does Sealby measure against these flags?
On-device AES-256-GCM with keys derived from your PIN and protected by the Secure Enclave, no account, no ads, no vendor-side reset (a recovery phrase you hold replaces it), and the design is documented publicly — including its limits. Apply the same checklist to us; that is what it is for.
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iPhone & iPad · iOS 17+ · Free