How recordings are encrypted
Updated
Privacy wasn’t added to Stealward after the product was built. We designed the recording system around end-to-end encryption from the beginning, even though that required substantial engineering work across recording, storage, playback, and device linking. We made that investment because a camera watching your things should not create a new privacy risk: your footage should remain yours.
Your recordings are end-to-end encrypted
Your recorded video, audio, and the thumbnails made from them are encrypted on your device before they’re uploaded. They’re encrypted with keys that only your own devices hold. That means:
- We only ever store encrypted bytes — we can’t watch or listen to your recordings.
- Neither we nor the cloud providers whose infrastructure we run on can decrypt them.
- Your keys never reach our servers in a form we can read, and are never synced to iCloud.
If you lose access to all of your devices, your recordings can’t be recovered — because no one but your devices ever held the keys.
Recordings aren’t kept forever
A recording is stored for a limited time after its session ends, and is then deleted. How long depends on your plan — see plans and pricing. You can also delete a session yourself at any point before then, and deleting your account removes everything.
If there’s a session you want to keep indefinitely, save it to your device while it’s still available.
Monitoring photos are handled a little differently
To spot threats, AI Watchdog needs to see photos of the scene during a live session. Once a photo is no longer needed for active analysis, Stealward seals it so only your devices can open it — typically within about five minutes. A small working set, such as the current reference photo, the latest view, or alert evidence, may need to remain available longer while the session is active. When the session ends, any remaining photos are sealed.
If you turn on help improve detection — it’s off by default — an encrypted copy is also available to us to review. See the Privacy Policy. There’s a fuller explanation in What AI Watchdog sees.
What isn’t encrypted
End-to-end encryption protects the content of your recordings, but some operational details are not encrypted because we need them to run and secure the service. These include:
- When a session started and ended, and its duration.
- Basic video details, such as its resolution.
- The wording of an alert, which passes through our systems and Apple in readable form so it can be delivered.
None of this gives us access to the video, audio, or thumbnails themselves.
The Privacy Policy sets out exactly what we hold and why.