Vaultumi

Selling or trading in your iPhone: what to do with your private photos first

By Vaultumi. Published .

Before a phone leaves your hands, the order of the steps matters more than any single step. Copy what you want to keep, prove the copy works, and only then erase. This guide covers the order, what happens to a Vaultumi vault on the way, and the leftovers people forget.

Selling or trading in your iPhone: what to do with your private photos first

Key takeaways

  • Do not erase the old phone until the new one has opened your photos and your vault.
  • A Vaultumi backup file with its passphrase is the portable copy. Your recovery code is the key to a vault restored from an iPhone backup.
  • Erasing the phone is Apple’s job: follow Apple’s current steps, and sign out of your Apple Account first.
  • Copies in iCloud, in exported files and in old backups are separate and need their own check.

The order that keeps you safe

Think of it as four stages: copy, prove, clean up, erase. People who go straight to erase sometimes find out afterwards that the one copy they trusted did not open. People who skip the cleanup hand over a phone that is signed in to their account or still tied to it. Allow an hour, not five minutes.

Stage 1: make the copies

  • Move to the new iPhone the way Apple describes, with a direct transfer from the old phone or a backup. Either route moves most of your apps and data. With iCloud Photos on, your photos come back from iCloud.
  • Make a Vaultumi backup file. In the app, open Settings > Backup & Restore, choose a generated secret or a passphrase of at least 12 characters, and save the .vaultumibackup file somewhere that is not only on this phone, such as Files, iCloud Drive or a computer. Store the passphrase in a different place.
  • Run the free Backup safety check on that file. It opens the file with its secret and compares it with your vault, and it changes nothing.
  • Find your recovery code. If you restore from an iPhone backup instead of the backup file, the PIN will not open the vault on the new phone, because the device-bound key is deliberately never part of a backup. The recovery code does.

Two things are not in a backup file: Intruder log photos and files still waiting from Vault Drop. If you want to keep Intruder photos, export them first. The decoy vault has no recovery code, so an iPhone backup or transfer cannot bring it back. A backup file made while you are inside the decoy covers that vault only.

Stage 2: prove it works on the new phone

Do this before touching the old one.

  1. Open Vaultumi on the new iPhone. If the vault came across with an iPhone backup or a transfer and your PIN is not accepted, use Forgot PIN, enter the recovery code, and set a new PIN. If you start fresh, create a vault and restore the backup file with its passphrase. Restoring adds items and never deletes anything.
  2. Open a handful of items, including a video and, if you use them, a document.
  3. Turn Face ID on again. It does not carry over.
  4. If you used documents, give the app a moment: the search text is not in backups and is read again on the new phone.

The step-by-step recovery routes are in the forgotten PIN guide and the backup guide.

Stage 3: clean up on the old phone

  • Exported files. Look in Photos, Files and your downloads for copies you exported from the vault. They are ordinary files that nothing protects.
  • Delete all data in Vaultumi (optional). The app has a Delete all data action that removes the vault’s files, the Vault Drop inbox and your reminder choices from this phone. It removes the app’s encrypted files, but it does not claim to erase flash storage securely. Treat it as tidiness, not as the erase.
  • iCloud Photos. Erasing a phone does not remove your iCloud photo library. That is useful, because your pictures stay, but it also means an old library remains on your account until you delete it yourself.
  • Shared albums and messages. Photos you sent or shared live on elsewhere.

Stage 4: sign out and erase, the way Apple says

Apple’s steps change a little between iOS versions, so read the current instructions for selling or trading in an iPhone on Apple’s support site and follow them. In outline you:

  1. Unpair an Apple Watch if you have one, then sign out of your Apple Account on the old phone (on recent iOS, Settings > your name > Sign Out). Find My and Activation Lock must be off, or the buyer gets a phone they cannot use. Apple says erasing turns them off too, and you may be asked for your Apple Account password.
  2. Open Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone and choose Erase All Content and Settings.
  3. Check that the phone restarts to the setup screen and no longer shows your account or name.
  4. Remove the old phone from your Apple Account’s device list afterwards.

If a shop does the erase for you, ask them to do it in front of you, or do it yourself first. Never hand over your Apple Account password or device passcode.

What about old backups?

Older iCloud or computer backups of the old phone still hold the encrypted Vaultumi files. They do not hold the device-bound key, so someone with only that backup has ciphertext they cannot test PIN guesses against, and the recovery code or a backup passphrase is what opens it. That is a reason to guard those two secrets, not a reason to panic. If you want those old copies gone, delete the backup in your iCloud settings or on your computer once the new phone is working.

A Vaultumi backup file is only as strong as its passphrase. If you saved one while selling the phone, keep the file and the passphrase apart, and delete files you no longer need.

Honest limits

  • Vaultumi cannot verify that a phone has been erased, and it cannot erase flash storage on its own. Apple’s erase is the step that counts.
  • It has not been independently audited. A buyer is unlikely to try, but the safest thing is that your photos are gone from the phone, not merely locked.
  • If you have lost both your recovery code and your backup file, a new phone will not bring the vault back. Find that out before you erase, not after.
  • If the phone is already out of your hands or stolen, the lost iPhone guide is the right page.

The security page sets out what Vaultumi protects and where that ends.

The short version

  1. Transfer to the new phone and make a Vaultumi backup file.
  2. Run the safety check and note where the recovery code is.
  3. Open the vault and a few photos on the new phone.
  4. Remove exported copies and optionally use Delete all data in the app.
  5. Sign out, turn off Find My, erase the old phone, and hand it over.

Sources

Primary sources behind the statements about iOS and cryptography on this page. The linked pages are in English.

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