Your notes are encrypted

Are my notes really encrypted?

Yes. Every note's title and body is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it is written to the database. Notebook and section names, your tags' contents, and any screenshots or images you paste in are encrypted the same way. What sits on disk looks like this:

GCM is an authenticated mode, which means the data is not only unreadable without the key — it cannot be silently altered either. If a single byte changed, decryption fails loudly rather than returning something subtly wrong.

What about backups?

Backups copy what is in the database, and what is in the database is ciphertext — so the backups are encrypted too. A backup that fell into the wrong hands would be a pile of unreadable blobs.

Backups run nightly to multiple separate locations, held by different providers, so that losing any one of them — an outage, an account problem, a failed disk — cannot take out the rest. We don't publish where they are; that's part of keeping them safe. An automated monitor raises an alert if a backup ever fails to complete.

If it's encrypted, how does search work?

This is the interesting part. Encrypted text cannot be searched — so most apps that offer real search simply store your notes in plain text. MyNotes365 does neither.

Instead, each word is converted into a keyed one-way code before being stored in the search index. Searching converts your query the same way and matches the codes. The index can be read all day and reveals nothing: there is no way to work backwards from a code to the word it came from.

Can you read my notes?

We don't, and the tools deliberately make it awkward to. The administration page shows account information only — when you signed up, when you last signed in, how many notebooks and pages you have — and cannot display note contents at all.

But here is the honest boundary, because you deserve a straight answer: the server holds the key that decrypts your notes, because the server is what decrypts them to show you. Anyone with full administrative control of the server could therefore reach that key. Encryption protects your notes from a stolen database, a stolen backup, a stolen disk, or a leaked copy — which is how data actually escapes in the real world. It is not a mathematical guarantee against the operator.

How is my account protected?

• Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes — never as text, and not recoverable even by us.
• You can skip passwords entirely and sign in with Google or Microsoft.
• Sign-in is protected against automated attacks by reCAPTCHA.
• Every request travels over HTTPS.
• Every query is scoped to your account, so one user's notes cannot be reached from another's session.

What happens when I delete a note?

It goes to the trash, where you can restore it. Deleting it from the trash is permanent and also removes its version history and any images it contained — nothing is quietly left behind.

Can I get back something I overwrote?

Yes. MyNotes365 keeps a history of each page as you edit it, and you can preview any earlier version and restore it. Restoring is itself recorded, so you can undo the undo.

Where is my data stored?

On a private server in the United States, run by ComputerHelpSOS LLC. Your notes are not sold, mined, shared with advertisers, or used to train anything.

Something else?

Email andy@computerhelpsos.com and a human will answer.

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