iPhone Photos- How to more securely "Hide" Photos

Question

Level 1

12 points

iPhone Photos- How to more securely "Hide" Photos

What is the most secure way to hide photos on your iPhone?

If one were to hypotheticallay have important but embarrassing Photos that they need to save on their phone (ex. An allergic reaction to bee stings on said person's bum that they need to share with their doctor, but not the neighbor.)

Marking a photo as "hidden" doesn't seem to: a.) hide it in albums such as "all photos"or "selfies" or b.) require a password or fingerprint scan to access the photos in the "hidden" album.

iPhone 6, iOS 9.3.1

Posted on Mar 27, 2017 3:27 PM

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Answer 1

sparklehoof Author

Level 1

12 points

Mar 27, 2017 4:43 PM in response to John Galt

Thank you for your reply. Your suggestion is a great work-around. You are absolutely right and I agree with you fully that phones are very personal devices.

Under some circumstances I like having the ability to scroll through my photos in front of another person. Ex. If we're sitting together and they asked to see photos from my vacation. If I'm scrolling through the thumbnails or the full size image in "All photos" and someone else saw the screen, I would prefer to have my private photos in a less public place than "all photos" album or "selfies" album.

In the event that apple photos does not offer this feature, I will definitely make sure no one sees my phone. Thank you again.

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

156,698 points

Mar 27, 2017 4:01 PM in response to sparklehoof

Why would you even let someone else use your iPhone? It's designed to be a very personal (and very secure) device. No one can see anything on it unless you unlock it using its passcode, and subsequently hand it to someone else.

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Answer 3

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Mar 27, 2017 5:05 PM in response to sparklehoof

The easy answer…

Don't keep that on your phone.

The more difficult answer.

Find an app that can password protect images, learn to use it, move the image to that app, lock the app, delete the original, double triple check that iCloud photostream was never active otherwise the image may be on the internet already.

Your photos may already be backed up on a Mac/ PC so also go hide them there too. Consider that iCloud may store them in backups depending on your sync settings. Anything on a PC/ Mac that is not encrypted can be recovered by data recovery tools.

Apple devices are designed by people who don't think this is an issue, the built in apps do not allow you to do what you desire. Frankly an old style digital camera with a removable SD card may be safer as it is not connected to the internet & designed to upload just about everything. I think it is easy to keep a SD card safe (or print a copy & take that with you to the doctor).

Good luck with the sore butt 🙂

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Answer 4

Mar 27, 2017 4:49 PM in response to sparklehoof

Put the photos that you want to be private in a separate album, and don't show that album when showing your photos. There's no way to lock specific photos or albums.

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