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Comment by sharpshadow | Hacker News Reader

Question: Would it be technically feasible to make an Apple app which encrypts/decrypts the files used in iCloud and is able to use iCloud itself?

As a solution to never have unencrypted files in iCloud.

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My gf doesn't have iCloud. She makes a backup from time to time by connecting her iphone to her macbook, encrypts the backup folder with 7z, and then I store the resulting file in my dropbox.

I follow the same procedure with my Android phone, no google cloud.

BTW anything I upload to Dropbox is encrypted first.

In case you don't already know, if you don't encrypt an iPhone backup with macOS first the backup won't contain _all_ of your data.

Apple says "Encrypted backups can include information that unencrypted backups don't" however the list they give is non-exhaustive. You might find yourself disappointed when trying to restore a non-encrypted backup that you've encrypted yourself in a disaster scenario.

Surely you can just open the archive and check whats in the backup yourself to satisfy that?

If it was that easy I wouldn't have bothered replying. Why don't you check in the backup and get back to me.

Because I dont own anything Apple, nor anything that doesnt give me full control over my stuff.

I assume that instead of educating me on how the backups are in a user unreadable format, you chose to make a snide remark and leave me to guess the truth.

Why would anyone trust a backup they cannot read themselves in an emergency?

Why are you commenting if you don't own an Apple device apart from to give yourself an opportunity to preach?

Thanks, will tell her to encrypt twice. Anyway, there is no critical info there, mainly photos.

Cryptomator does this and it's on the App Store. And it's open source! https://github.com/cryptomator/ios

That's only possible for the files owned by the app. Apps have no access to other unrelated apps' iCloud data.

Apple basically already has this built into macos - you can create an encrypted disk image and mount it to access the files. I'm not sure if it is possible to open these on ios.

iOS cannot mount .dmg files (at least, not without jailbreaking).

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