1. The short version
Everything you put into Avera Vault — photos, videos, files, contacts and notes — is encrypted on your phone with a key produced from a passcode only you know. That passcode is never stored and never sent anywhere.
You can use Avera Vault completely as a guest, without an account. If you do create an account, it exists for one purpose: to hold an encrypted backup so you can restore your vault on a new phone. We can see that a backup exists and roughly how big it is. We cannot open it.
2. What stays on your phone
Your vault lives on your device. It is not uploaded anywhere unless you create an account and choose to back it up.
Encrypted with your key
- Photos, videos and files you add to the vault.
- The names of those files.
- Contact records — names, numbers, email addresses, organisation, job title and any note attached to them.
- The text of your notes, and the titles of your albums.
- The index that makes search work, which is stored in a scrambled form that is meaningless without your unlocked vault.
Stored on the device without encryption
A small amount of technical bookkeeping is left readable so the app can sort, size and lay out your vault without decrypting everything first. It stays on your phone in every case, and it describes your items rather than revealing them:
- How large each item is and what type of file it is.
- When an item was added or last changed.
- The pixel dimensions and duration of media.
- A single letter per contact, so the A–Z list can draw itself.
Your app settings — auto-lock delay, whether biometric unlock is on, which categories you chose to protect — are also stored locally.
3. What leaves your phone
As a guest, nothing does. Avera Vault as a guest does not register you, does not identify you and does not send your vault or anything about it anywhere.
If you create an account, two things travel to us, and only these two:
- The account details described in section 4 — enough to recognise that a backup belongs to you.
- The encrypted backup described in section 5 — a sealed container we have no way to open.
Your passcode, the key it produces, and the readable contents of your vault never leave the device in any circumstance.
4. Your optional account
An account is created by signing in with Apple or Google and giving a phone number. Here is everything it stores about you:
| What | Where it comes from | Why we need it |
|---|---|---|
| An identifier from Apple or Google | Given to us by Apple or Google when you sign in. It is specific to Avera Vault and is not your Apple ID or Google account name. | So that the same you, on a different phone, finds the same backup. |
| Your email address and name | Only if Apple or Google passes them to us — that is your choice at the sign-in screen, and Apple can substitute a relay address. | To identify your account if you contact support. Nothing is sent to it automatically. |
| The phone number you type | You, during setup. | To label the backup so it can be told apart from another one. It is not verified — no code is sent to it, and we do not use it to call or message you. |
| A random identifier for the app install | Generated on your phone. It is not your device's advertising ID and cannot be used to track you elsewhere. | To recognise which install a backup came from. |
| Dates | Recorded automatically. | When the account was created, when it last backed up, and — if you delete it — when that was. |
That is the complete list. There is no profile beyond it, no behavioural record, and nothing derived from what your vault contains.
Signing in with Apple or Google
The sign-in itself happens with Apple or Google, not with us. We never see your password for those accounts. Their own privacy policies cover that step.
5. Your encrypted backup
A backup is made on your phone and sealed there before it is sent. It contains your vault exactly as it is already stored — encrypted — plus the index of it, encrypted separately, plus the sealed key that only your passcode can open.
What we can see
- That a backup exists for your account.
- How many pieces it is made of and how many bytes it takes up.
- When it was uploaded.
What we cannot see
- Any photo, video, file, contact or note inside it.
- Any file name, contact name, note title, or album name.
- Your passcode, or the key it produces.
This is not a policy commitment that we choose to keep — it is a property of how the backup is built. We could not read it if we were asked to, and we could not hand a readable copy to anyone who demanded one.
Uploading a new backup replaces the previous one. We keep one backup per account, not a history.
6. Permissions Avera Vault asks for
Avera Vault asks only for the permissions that match the categories you chose to protect when you set the vault up. Decline a category there and its permission is never requested.
Every permission is optional. Avera Vault asks for them once, right after you set up your passcode, using your phone's own permission prompts. Whatever you answer, the vault opens and works. Declining a permission only turns off the feature that needs it — nothing else is limited.
Asked again only when you need it
If you declined a permission, Avera Vault asks for it again at the moment you use the feature that depends on it — for example when you add contacts from your phone, or add photos. If your phone will no longer show the prompt (after you have refused it, some phones only let you change the answer in their settings), Avera Vault tells you so and offers a shortcut to those settings. It never asks in the background.
Without a permission, Avera Vault reads nothing it covers. Any automatic step that would need it is simply skipped, and nothing is sent anywhere because of the refusal.
- Photos and videos
- So Avera Vault can copy the media you select into the vault and play it back. Access is used to read what you choose to protect; it is not used to scan or catalogue your library for us. If you decline, you can still add individual photos and videos through your phone's own picker, which hands Avera Vault only the items you picked.
- Files
- So you can add documents from your device storage. On most phones this needs no permission at all — documents arrive through your system's own file picker, which hands Avera Vault only the file you picked.
- Contacts
- So you can choose contacts from your phone's address book and move them into encrypted storage. Without it, Avera Vault cannot read your address book, but you can still use every other part of the vault.
- Face or fingerprint unlock
- Optional. Your biometric data is handled entirely by your phone's operating system — Avera Vault only receives a yes or no, and never sees your face or fingerprint.
Partial access is fine
If your phone offers to share only selected photos rather than your whole library, Avera Vault accepts that and works with the selection you gave it. You can widen it later from Settings → Permissions in the app.
If you withdraw a permission later
You can revoke any of them in your phone's settings at any time. The vault keeps opening as normal; the feature that relied on the permission stops reading from your phone, and Avera Vault asks again the next time you use it.
Nothing already in the vault is deleted or changed by this, and nothing is sent anywhere because of it. Grant the permission again and the feature picks up where it left off.
7. What we do not collect
- No advertising identifiers. There are no ad networks in Avera Vault.
- No analytics or behaviour tracking. We do not record what you tap, how long you use the app, or what you search for.
- No location data.
- No contact list harvesting. Contacts you protect go into your vault. They are not uploaded to build a social graph or to find other users.
- No cookies or trackers on this website. These pages set nothing in your browser and load nothing from third parties.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. There is nothing to sell: the account record in section 4 is the entirety of what we hold about you in readable form.
8. How long we keep things
- Your vault: on your phone, for as long as you keep it there. Deleting the app deletes it.
- Your account and backup: for as long as the account exists.
- After you delete your account: the account and its backup are marked for deletion and kept for 30 days, then permanently erased. The window exists so that a deletion made by accident, or during a phone change, can still be undone by signing in again. Nothing new is accepted for the account during it. Full detail here.
- Support emails: kept only as long as needed to resolve your question and to keep a record of it, then deleted.
9. Your choices and rights
Depending on where you live, you may have legal rights over your personal information — to see it, correct it, export it, restrict how it is used, or have it erased. Avera Vault is built so that most of these need no request at all:
- See what we hold
- Everything is on your Backup account screen in the app: the identity you signed in with, your phone number, and when your last backup was made. That is the whole record.
- Export your data
- Your vault is yours and lives on your phone; the app can export items back out of it. We hold nothing readable to export.
- Correct it
- Signing in again refreshes your details from Apple or Google.
- Erase it
- Delete your account in the app. No email to us is required. How deletion works.
- Object, restrict, or complain
- Write to privacy@averavault.app. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.
We will not refuse you service, charge you differently, or degrade the app because you exercised any of these rights.
We do not use your information to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you.
10. Children
Avera Vault is not directed at children and is not intended for anyone under 13, or under the minimum age required in your country where that age is higher. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, write to privacy@averavault.app and we will delete it.
11. How we protect what we hold
The strongest protection is structural: your vault arrives already encrypted, so the worst outcome of a breach on our side is the disclosure of sealed containers and the short account record in section 4. There is no store of readable personal content to lose.
On top of that, access to account records is limited to the people who need it to operate the service, connections are encrypted in transit, and stored backups are kept separate from account details.
No system is perfect, and we will not claim otherwise. If a breach occurs that affects your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
12. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it. If a change materially affects what we collect or how it is used, we will say so in the app before the change takes effect, so you can decide whether to continue.
We will never make a change that gives us the ability to read an existing backup. Doing so is not possible without your passcode, and that is by design rather than by promise.
13. Contact us
Privacy questions and requests go to privacy@averavault.app. Anything else — a problem, a bug, a question about how something works — is best sent to support@averavault.app, or start from the Support page.
Avera Vault is published by Avera Vault.