{"id":13260,"date":"2016-01-12T11:58:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T16:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=13260"},"modified":"2019-08-05T16:48:34","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T20:48:34","slug":"unencrypted-itunes-backups-dont-include-health-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/12\/unencrypted-itunes-backups-dont-include-health-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Unencrypted iTunes Backups Don&rsquo;t Include Health Data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TrevMcKendrick\/status\/685275939035426816\">Trevor McKendrick<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TrevMcKendrick\/status\/685275939035426816\">\n<p>Unbelievable. If you restore an unencrypted iPhone backup from iTunes, all your health data disappears.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT205220\">Apple<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT205220\"><p>The Encrypt Backup feature in iTunes locks and encodes your data. An encrypted iTunes backup includes certain information that other backups don&rsquo;t:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Your saved passwords<\/li>\n<li>Wi-Fi settings<\/li>\n<li>Website history<\/li>\n<li>Health data<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>iTunes doesn&rsquo;t encrypt your backups by default. To encrypt a backup in iTunes for the first time, you&rsquo;ll need to turn on the password-protected Encrypt Backup option. After you turn on Encrypt Backup, iTunes automatically makes encrypted backups for that device from then on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>This makes a fair amount of sense as a privacy feature. You might not want your health data stored in the clear. But I doubt many people know how this works, and encrypted backups are not the default, so it&rsquo;s easy to accidentally lose your data when restoring. As far as I know, there is no good warning about what might happen.<\/p>\n<p>After you&rsquo;ve overwritten your phone with the unencrypted backup, and used the phone for a while, it&rsquo;s not clear what to do. iOS backups and restores are all-or-nothing. There is no granularity to say: keep the new data I&rsquo;ve created in other apps, but restore my old HealthKit data from iCloud.<\/p>\n\n<p>Update (2016-01-12): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hboon\/status\/686965874390007808\">Hwee-Boon<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hboon\/status\/686966230872240129\">Yar<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hboon\/status\/686965874390007808\"><p>I had a corrupted health.db in an iCloud backup. After a few days, couldn&rsquo;t get a working version anymore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hboon\/status\/686966230872240129\"><p>&#8230;had to setup iPhone as new, lost all health data (years of steps and sleep data from Jawbone UP) and watch activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/plugsinboxes\/status\/686979726636810240\">Plugs in Boxes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/plugsinboxes\/status\/686979726636810240\"><p>My Workflow for exporting and importing Health data to and from CSV<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trevor McKendrick: Unbelievable. If you restore an unencrypted iPhone backup from iTunes, all your health data disappears. Apple: The Encrypt Backup feature in iTunes locks and encodes your data. An encrypted iTunes backup includes certain information that other backups don&rsquo;t: Your saved passwords Wi-Fi settings Website history Health data iTunes doesn&rsquo;t encrypt your backups by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-08-05T20:48:37Z","apple_news_api_id":"3d1a661f-3ec5-439a-864e-b5b76d959b45","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2019-08-05T20:48:38Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/APRpmHz7FQ5qGTrW3bZWbRQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[146,1857,920,16,31,1137,224,355,48],"class_list":["post-13260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-backup","tag-csv","tag-healthkit","tag-icloud","tag-ios","tag-ios-9","tag-itunes","tag-privacy","tag-security"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13260"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13276,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13260\/revisions\/13276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}