How recordings are encrypted

Stealward is a camera that watches your things, so privacy is built into how it stores what it records.

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 touch our servers 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.

Monitoring photos are handled a little differently

To spot threats, the camera watchdog analyzes still frames during a live session, then seals them at rest so afterward only your devices can open them. There’s a fuller explanation in What the AI watchdog sees.

What isn’t encrypted

We’re careful not to over-claim. Some technical details about a session — such as its timing, duration, and video resolution, and the belonging labels the watchdog produces — are not encrypted, because we need them to operate and secure the service. And the wording of an alert passes through our systems and Apple in readable form so it can be delivered. What stays sealed to your devices is the content that matters most: your recordings.

For the full picture, see the Privacy Policy.