You want the convenience of accessing your journal from your phone, tablet, and computer. But you also want absolute privacy. These goals seem contradictory—how can your data be in the cloud yet completely private? The answer is encrypted cloud backup with zero-knowledge architecture.
The Multi-Device Dilemma
Modern life requires flexibility. You might journal on your phone during your morning commute, review entries on your tablet in the evening, or organize thoughts on your computer at your desk. Each device should have access to your complete journal history, updated in real-time.
Traditional solutions force you to choose: either keep everything local on one device (losing access everywhere else) or sync through the cloud (exposing your private thoughts to the service provider). Hello Diary refuses this false choice.
What Is Zero-Knowledge Encryption?
Zero-knowledge encryption means the service provider—in this case, Hello Diary—has zero knowledge of what you're storing. We literally cannot read your journal entries, even if we wanted to. Even if compelled by a court order. Even if our servers were breached.
The Encryption Flow
- Create Entry: You speak or type your journal entry on your device
- Encrypt Locally: Before anything leaves your device, the entry is encrypted using your personal key
- Upload Encrypted Data: The encrypted (unreadable) data is sent to our cloud servers
- Store as Gibberish: We store what looks like random characters—meaningless without your key
- Download to Other Devices: When you open Hello Diary on another device, the encrypted data is downloaded
- Decrypt Locally: Your device uses your key to decrypt and display your entries
At no point does readable text exist on our servers.
Real-World Security Scenarios
Scenario 1: Server Breach. Imagine a hacker breaks into our cloud servers tomorrow. They steal our entire database. What do they get? Millions of encrypted files they cannot read. Without your personal encryption key (which we don't have), the stolen data is worthless.
Scenario 2: Government Subpoena. Suppose authorities serve us with a court order demanding a user's journal entries. We'd comply with the law and hand over everything we have. But what we have is encrypted data we cannot decrypt. The legal demand cannot force us to produce something we don't possess—your encryption key.
The Trade-off: Responsibility
Zero-knowledge encryption means if you lose your encryption key (don't have it on any device and lost your recovery phrase), your data is permanently unrecoverable. We cannot reset your password because we don't know it. This is the price of true privacy—complete ownership.