Blog
Real-world privacy cases, honest technical explainers, and field notes on steganography — hiding encrypted secrets inside ordinary images.
How to Remove Metadata From Photos, and What Each Method Actually Strips
The iPhone share sheet's Location toggle removes GPS from one share and nothing else. What each method on iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows really strips.
read_more >>Did EU Chat Control Pass? What Is Actually in Force
No, not the part people mean. What is in force is voluntary, excludes end-to-end encrypted chats, and runs to 3 April 2028. The mandatory version has not passed.
read_more >>Apple Legacy Contact: What Your Family Gets — and the Passwords It Doesn't
No. A Legacy Contact gets your photos, messages, notes and backups — not your iCloud Keychain: no passwords, passkeys or payment details. How to fill the gap.
read_more >>Outlook Encrypt vs Do Not Forward vs Confidential: What Each One Actually Does
Encrypt protects it in transit. Do Not Forward also blocks forwarding, printing and copying. Confidential is whatever your admin set. None stops a screenshot.
read_more >>What Happens to Your Crypto When You Die?
If nobody can reach your keys, nothing happens — it stays locked forever. How to let your family recover it without handing anyone the keys today.
read_more >>Where to Store Your 2FA Recovery Codes
Recovery codes exist for the day you lose your phone — so the obvious places to keep them fail on exactly that day. Where they belong, and where they don't.
read_more >>How to Send a Passport Copy Securely
Is it safe to email a passport copy? A scan can never be recalled: check the request is real, redact what they do not need, mark it, then pick the channel.
read_more >>How to Send Tax Documents to Your Accountant Securely
Your accountant's portal exists for a reason, and it is not that email gets intercepted. Here is what actually goes wrong, and the one habit that fixes most of it.
read_more >>Does WhatsApp or WeChat Destroy Hidden Data in Photos? We Tested Every Major Chat App
WeChat is the internet's byword for brutal photo recompression — and WaxSeal's mark still opens after it, along with WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, iMessage, Instagram, Weibo and more. Only the recipient's approved device, behind their own Face ID or Touch ID, can open it; keys never leave the Secure Enclave.
read_more >>Where to Store Your Seed Phrase Safely: Paper, Metal, Split or Hidden
Paper, steel, a safe, a password manager, a photo, Shamir shares or multisig — what each protects against, what it doesn't, the places that are never acceptable, and how to combine them.
read_more >>Steganography vs Cryptography: What Is the Difference?
Cryptography makes a message unreadable. Steganography makes it unnoticed. They solve different problems, fail in different ways, and work best together — here is the difference in plain English, with the cases where each one is the wrong tool.
read_more >>One-Time Secret Alternatives: Six Ways to Share a Secret That Expires
One-Time Secret, Yopass, Password Pusher, Bitwarden Send, password-manager share links and a photo-based approach for teams — what each one is good at, where it is weak, and the three questions that pick the right one: who runs the server, what stops a link preview spending your single view, and can you take it back?
read_more >>Is Plausible Deniability Legal? Deniable Encryption and the Law
Owning deniable encryption is legal almost everywhere. Lying to a court about it is not — and the UK, France, Australia and India can order you to hand over a key.
read_more >>Is It Safe to Send a Password over WhatsApp?
Safe in transit: WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. The risk comes after delivery. Here are the six places the password stays, and what to send instead.
read_more >>Is Gmail Confidential Mode Actually Secure?
It sets an expiry and hides the forward button — but it is not end-to-end encrypted, Google can still read it, and a screenshot defeats it entirely.
read_more >>How to Split a Seed Phrase into 3 Parts — Safely
Cutting a recovery phrase into thirds feels safe and is not: lose one piece and the wallet is gone, and the popular 2-of-3 word-overlap trick leaves a 12-word phrase within reach of a brute-force attack. Here is the arithmetic, and the proper way to do it — Shamir's Secret Sharing, where a single share reveals nothing.
read_more >>How to Send Credit Card Details Securely
Usually the right answer is not to send them at all — use a payment link or a virtual card. When you really must hand over a card number: what never to do, and how to split it.
read_more >>How to Send Bank Details Securely (The Risk Isn't What You Think)
Your account number isn't really a secret — it's on every invoice you send. The danger is someone changing it in transit. How to send and receive them safely.
read_more >>How to Send a Self-Destructing Message on iPhone
iMessage has no self-destructing texts — none, for text. Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram all do, and their clocks start at different moments: when the message is read, or when it is sent. Here is what each app actually deletes and when, what 'self-destruct' cannot promise once a message is on a screen, and the approach a team needs when the message has to travel through whatever chat app the other person uses.
read_more >>How to Send a Password Securely (and Only Once)
Email and chat keep a password forever. The safe ways to send or share one, compared: password manager links, one-time secret links, two channels, and what to do by email.
read_more >>How to Hide Text in an Image: Two Ways, and When Each One Breaks
Two ways to hide text in an image: encrypt it into the pixels (works offline, wiped by chat-app compression) or a watermark that survives WhatsApp. Try it free.
read_more >>A Photo You Can Take Back
StegoSafe hides a whole secret inside a photo and never lets it near a server. WaxSeal does something that sounds contradictory: it sends a secret in a photo and lets the sender revoke it later. Here is how both can be true, what the vault actually holds, and why a four-digit PIN is not the joke it looks like.
read_more >>Shamir Secret Sharing, Explained With Pictures
Split a secret into five pieces so that any three rebuild it and any two reveal nothing at all. Not 'nothing useful' — nothing. Here is the 1979 idea behind that, drawn rather than derived, plus where SLIP39 fits and what the scheme genuinely does not protect you from.
read_more >>Five Photos. Any Three Bring Back My Seed Phrase.
Every backup of a recovery phrase has the same flaw: one hiding place, one thing to lose. Here's what it looks like to split a seed phrase across five ordinary photos so that any three recover it — and losing two costs you nothing.
read_more >>What Actually Happens When You Hide a Secret Inside a Photo
A plain-English walkthrough of image steganography done right: AES-256 encryption first, optional Shamir splitting across multiple photos, LSB embedding — and the honest list of things that can destroy hidden data.
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