End-to-End Encryption in Day One Journal App

Securing Your Data with End-To-End Encryption

End-to-end encryption is necessary because government agencies and criminals are able to intercept your data as it travels through the Internet. It does require a certain level of sophistication technically, but it is possible. This is why we use software such as GPG encryption with our emails. This is why we use messaging services which offer end-to-end encryption. The data at each end of the data transfer process is encrypted and protected by whatever security methods you have on your mobile or desktop computers. Unwanted guests have to get past passwords and fingerprint scanners. It isn’t just data in emails or text files of various types which we need to protect. We also have to protect the data within applications if that data is worthy of protection. One example of this would be with an application used to keep a journal. None of us would be very happy with anybody else reading our journal or diary. We like to keep our innermost thoughts private. My journalling application of choice is Day One. It has just offered the capabilities and facilities of end-to-end. Read about Day One in Digital Journaling Book.

Should I encrypt all my data I send out?

I maintain it is important to encrypt all of your data sent from one place to another on the Internet. This is the case whether the data is sensitive or not. If you only encrypt the sensitive and personally important data you are adding a flag to that encrypted data. The flag is saying ‘Hey look at me, I’m worthy of your attention.’ If there comes a time when the decryption software is improved then the criminals would easily find encrypted data to take a look at to see what’s in there. If you’ve encrypted everything then there is a chance that if an encrypted message is singled out for attention, the bad guys have more of a chance finding your cooking recipe or something else equally unimportant. The good stuff would be hidden within a huge amount of worthless information. This is also why from time to time we increase the encryption to a harder level making it more difficult to decrypt. Over time computers get better and software improves. We have to keep a good ratio between the level of encryption and how easy to break that encryption. So for example with the level of encryption we use now it would take a really good computer a really long time to decrypt any messages. It wouldn’t be worth the effort or the time because so much time would have passed, possibly even many years and the information would be worthless by that time.

Encrypting personal data in Day One

Encryption is now built into the system of Day One and you’re only going to need it if you use the application on more than one device. So if you use Day One on your Mac and also on your iPhone and synchronise between the two then you should enable end-to-end encryption. As your data goes from your Mac journalling application to the server and back out again to your mobile device it is made unreadable by encryption. The developer of the Day One application has made it easy to set up encryption. You only have to go into the settings for the application to the section for Journals. In there you’ll find an option to create a secret key. You’ll see this key created as a series of letters and numbers and also as a QR code.

End-to-end encryption set up

After you’ve created this secret key you can choose which of your journals you want to encrypt. You can start this process either on your mobile devices or on the Mac version of Day One. The synchronisation process will be interrupted to your other devices until you input the secret key. Typing or doing a copy and paste of the secret key is one way of doing it, but the easiest way is to scan the QR code. This is the way I did it and it was no problem at all. All I had to do was to show the QR code on my Mac screen and point the camera from my iPhone and iPad at the image.

I fully recommend before you begin the process of encryption it would be a good idea to make a backup of your data.

After you start the process on one of your devices the encryption of the data begins. During this encryption process some of your data may be unavailable. Until the end-to-end encryption process is finished you may see a discrepancy between the data you have on your desktop computer in the dAy One application and what you have in the mobile app. The time it’ll take to complete the process will depend upon the amount data. With my Day One journal it’s going to take some time due to the large number of entries. You might also consider doing one journal at a time starting with the smallest journals you have. This advice is only gonna be any use to you if you’ve broken up your daily journalling into separate journals. I have a basic journal which does most of my stuff, a journal to keep track of coding and another journal for keeping track of my writing. I also have a few other ones for specific sets of information.

It is well worth doing this encryption and keeping your personal information safe and secure. Don’t just do the end-to-end encryption with the data in Day One though. Use GPG Pretty Good Privacy on your email communications to keep your emails private. Don’t forget to use a good quality messenger app which also does end-to-end encryption. I get that with the Apple Messages app. What’s App also does end-to-end encryption. All you need to do then is to set a good password for getting to your computers to protect the data when it is at home.