Protecting personal photos on Android phones

How to make personal photos on your phone inaccessible to strangers? How to set up the phone so that when photographing confidential photos are automatically recorded in the cryptocontainer? And how to keep the possibility of quick and convenient access to them?

These issues became relevant for me after my LG-E988 unexpectedly refused to work and after several unsuccessful attempts to bring it back to life, I realized that a visit to the service center is simply inevitable. Along with this, the understanding came that all my personal pictures are stored in the internal memory of the device. I really would not want someone outsider looking at them at their leisure ... But there are other situations, your relatives took the phone to see it, it was in the hands of friends, colleagues or was lost.

After this incident, I realized that it would be better if my personal photos are stored on an external memory card, plus they will be encrypted. I managed to solve this problem using the URSafe Media Redirector and CyberSafe Encryption applications . To do this:

1. In URSafe Media Redirector, instead of the standard directory for saving photos (I have it / storage / sdcard0 / DCIM / 100LGDSC), I pointed another to the external SD Card (/ storage / sdcard1 / Photos):



I took a test shot - after photographing it saved in the Photos folder I need.

2. In CyberSafe Encryption created a new safe in Propertiesset a similar path for mounting - the safe will be mounted on the Photos folder:



In this mode, the container file system will be mounted on the device’s file system. Temporary files are not used in this mode.

If we talk about the secrecy of the safe itself, there are 3 possibilities:
- the safe is opened from the GUI program or using the CyberSafe widget (which can be added to the desktop).
- the safe is added to the main screen only at the moment of the beginning of work with it; if the safe file is located somewhere here Android / data / com.android.browser / files and is called, for example, SystemCashe.Table, it will be quite difficult to find it on the device.
- The safe file is not stored at all on the device .

3. For the convenience of working inCyberSafe Encryption chose a third-party file manager , ES _3, as its explorer . After I opened the safe, there are no files in it yet, the explorer displays the path to the folder on which the redirect was made. I took a couple of test shots, updated the contents of the folder in Explorer - the photos got into the mounted Photos folder:



4. I closed the safe in CyberSafe Encryption , updated the contents of the Photos folder - as a result, there are other "unclassified" photos - the ones I moved to it earlier from / DCIM / 100LGDSC, as well as one test photo that was taken after the redirect, but before mounting. Pictures taken in mount mode are not displayed in the folder - they are in the safe and encrypted.



That is, pictures that do not need encryption need to be done when the safe is closed. Re-mounting the safe on the Photos folder - encrypted files are displayed again in the directory.

I think this solution will be much more useful than any of these applications for hiding photos on Google Play. First of all, because simply hiding the files does not provide their reliable protection , and encryption is far from every one of them. In addition, such applications clearly indicate that photos are hiding on the phone.

As a result of using this scheme, there are no signs on the phone that exactly photos are hidden (encrypted) on it, because the camera is configured in the usual way, URSafe Media Redirector- A normal application that allows you not to clutter up the internal memory. The presence of CyberSafe Encryption may indicate that some data is being protected on the phone, however, it is not known what kind of data it is.

Without using a redirect, personal photos would have to be manually copied to the safe constantly. But after configuring this scheme, all the pictures that are taken in mount mode are automatically recorded in the encrypted container.