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How to secure your notes with Apple Advanced Data Protection
At StarJot, our zero-data architecture ensures that your notes stay locally on your device. However, to make your notes accessible across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, we utilise Apple's native iCloud syncing.
By default, iCloud is highly secure. Your data is encrypted in transit and on Apple's servers. But under the standard tier, Apple still holds the encryption keys. This means that, technically, they could access your data if legally compelled to do so.
For a note-taking app designed to be a safe haven for your raw, unpolished thoughts, we believe you should take privacy one step further. That is where Advanced Data Protection (ADP) comes in.
Why Advanced Data Protection is essential
When you enable Advanced Data Protection, iCloud upgrades to true end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
This means the encryption keys are stored only on your trusted devices. Apple no longer holds them. If Apple's servers were breached, or if a government demanded access to your iCloud Drive, your StarJot notes would remain completely unreadable.
Your mind is your own. Enabling ADP ensures that your digital notes are treated with the exact same level of absolute privacy as a paper journal locked in your desk drawer.
How to activate Advanced Data Protection
IMPORTANT
Account recovery is required: Because Apple will no longer have your encryption keys, they cannot help you recover your data if you lose access to your account. You will be required to set up an alternative recovery method (like a trusted contact or a 28-character recovery key) before enabling ADP.
To turn this feature on using your iPhone or iPad:
- Open the Settings app.
- Tap your Name / Apple ID at the very top.
- Tap on iCloud.
- Scroll down and tap Advanced Data Protection.
- Tap Turn On Advanced Data Protection and follow the on-screen instructions to set up your recovery method.
Once activated, your StarJot iCloud folder is mathematically secured against anyone but you.
A note on the United Kingdom
WARNING
UK availability: Due to recent legislative changes, Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection to new users in the United Kingdom. If you already had ADP active on your account before Apple was forced to pull the feature, it remains active—but no one else can turn it on.
If you are based in the UK and attempt to follow the steps above, you will find the option unavailable. Resolving this standoff will ultimately require a political solution. No doubt Apple is currently lobbying the American government to, in turn, pressure the UK government to drop its attempts to mandate a backdoor into their encryption technology.
To be completely blunt: what the UK government is attempting to coerce Apple into doing is obscene. Demanding a built-in vulnerability to bypass end-to-end encryption is a tactic you would expect from the Chinese government, not from one of the most important countries in the Western world.
The reality behind the scenes is that the sweeping powers recently granted to the Home Office are the result of fundamentally bad law. The politicians who pushed this legislation through Parliament simply didn't have a clue about the technical realities of what they were voting on. During the period these bills were making their way through the Commons and the Lords, it became painfully clear that this was part of a wider raft of utterly flawed, garbage tech policy that stumbled its way into law.
At StarJot, we believe your private thoughts should never be subjected to mass surveillance or government incompetence. We strongly support Apple's refusal to compromise their encryption standards by creating UK-specific vulnerabilities, even if it means withholding the feature entirely for now.
We remain hopeful that this legislative embarrassment will be corrected. Until then, remember that any notes kept strictly local to your device (without iCloud sync enabled) remain entirely in your control.