How to protect the account that holds your photo backup

Turning on photo backup is one of the best things you can do for your photos. It’s also a quiet transfer of trust. The pictures no longer depend only on your phone and its lock; they depend on an online account that can be opened from anywhere in the world with the right sign-in. Most photo leaks don’t involve breaking encryption. They involve someone signing in.

How people get into photo accounts

• A reused password leaked from another site and tried on yours.
• A phishing message that looks like a sign-in page.
• Someone close to you who knows or guesses your password, or picks up your unlocked phone.
• A stolen phone used to receive your sign-in codes or reset your password.
• An old device still signed in, such as a sold phone or a shared computer.

Each has a specific fix.

1. A password used nowhere else

Your phone account’s password should be long, random and unique. A passphrase of several random words is easy to type and very hard to guess. A password manager makes this painless for every account.

2. A second step, or a passkey

Two-step verification means your password alone isn’t enough to sign in. You also confirm on a trusted device or enter a code.

On Android, open your account settings, go to Security & sign-in and turn on 2-Step Verification. The official help recommends sign-in prompts on your phone over text codes, because prompts also help protect against someone taking over your phone number.

On iPhone, accounts created in recent years use two-factor authentication by default. You can check under Settings, your name, then Sign-In & Security.

Passkeys go a step further. They’re stored on your devices, unlocked with your face, fingerprint or screen lock, and can’t be written down or handed to a fake website. Both phone platforms support them for your main account.

3. Recovery details that are yours

Your recovery email and phone number are how you, or someone pretending to be you, get back in. Check that:

• the recovery phone number is your current number;
• the recovery email is an account you still use and control;
• nobody else’s number or email has been added.

If someone had access to your phone or account, they may have added their own. See your phone was stolen and they saw your PIN for what to do in a hurry.

4. Only your devices

Every signed-in device can usually view your photo library. Review the list and remove old phones, shared computers and anything you don’t recognize. See checking which devices are signed in to your account.

5. Your phone’s own lock

Your phone is signed in to your account all the time, so its screen lock protects your photo library too. Use a PIN of six digits or more, and change it if someone else has learned it.

6. Watch for alerts

Both platforms send alerts for new sign-ins and security changes. Don’t ignore them. If you didn’t sign in, change your password and review your devices straight away.

What account security doesn’t change

Securing the account keeps strangers out. It doesn’t change who else can read your backup. On most services the provider can read your photos unless you’ve turned on end-to-end encryption where it’s offered; see is cloud photo backup encrypted?. And anything in a shared album is visible to everyone in it.

For the most private photos, it can make sense to keep them out of the backup entirely. Silo, coming soon to iPhone and Android, keeps its vault on the phone, encrypted under its own PIN. Encrypted backup to your own cloud storage arrives with launch: it’s encrypted on the phone before upload, so the storage provider holds only data it can’t read.