Sharing a room, a kitchen and a Wi-Fi network

The desk problem

In shared housing, your phone spends hours on surfaces other people walk past: a desk by the door, the kitchen counter, the sofa. Nobody has to be snooping for a message preview or an open photo to be seen. Two settings fix most of it.

1. Auto-Lock short. Settings, Display & Brightness, Auto-Lock, as Apple’s passcode page shows. One minute is plenty.
2. Previews only when unlocked. Settings, Notifications, Show Previews, When Unlocked, per Apple’s notifications guide.

Your passcode is yours

Flatmates are often friends, and sharing a passcode feels like trust. It’s still a bad idea: anyone with your passcode can open everything, and you can’t take it back without changing it. If someone needs to make a call, dial for them. The phone left unlocked page shows what an open phone gives away in a minute.

Paperwork that follows students around

Student life comes with a surprising amount of identity paper:

• passport or ID, often scanned for enrolment or a landlord,
• student loan or grant letters,
• a tenancy agreement and deposit receipt,
• bank cards and account details,

These end up as photos in the camera roll, next to party pictures, where a flatmate scrolling to see last night’s photos can’t miss them. Keep them in a vault instead. Photos and videos are sealed the moment they arrive, and afterwards you can remove the originals from Photos if you like. A passport works as a record, so the number is on hand without a photo of the page. An ID / Passport record has fields for a full name, a document number and an expiry date, and you can add fields of your own. The ID scanning guide covers making clean copies.

On the free plan, photos of documents work up to the plan’s limit. The free plan holds up to 100 photos. Scans, PDFs and records need Sealed Pro. On the free plan you can add photos. Videos, documents, notes and records need Sealed Pro.

Shared laptops and printers

Printing a boarding pass from a flatmate’s laptop leaves a copy in their downloads. Print from your own device where you can, or delete the file and empty their trash before you hand it back. Never sign in to your own accounts on a shared computer without signing out.

The Wi-Fi everyone shares

A shared home network is fine for everyday browsing. For moving big private files from your laptop to your phone, use a network you trust. The vault’s transfer runs over your own Wi-Fi and never through the internet. Wireless transfer runs over your own Wi-Fi, between your computer and your iPhone, and nothing goes through the internet. The hotel and café Wi-Fi page covers networks you trust less.

Moving out

At the end of the year, check you haven’t left anything on shared devices, delete the tenancy photos you no longer need, and keep the deposit receipt until the money is back.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps keep ID scans and money letters out of the camera roll and behind their own passcode. Sealed has a passcode of its own, a gate inside the app that is separate from your iPhone passcode. Photos and videos are sealed the moment they arrive, and afterwards you can remove the originals from Photos if you like.

It helps lock fast when you set the phone down on a shared desk. Sealed locks as soon as you leave it unless you choose a delay, and it covers its contents in the app switcher. Sealed can lock when you shake the phone or set it face down.

It doesn’t change your phone’s own lock or notification settings. Sealed is a private photo vault for the photos, videos and documents you’d rather not keep in your camera roll.

It doesn’t protect files on a flatmate’s laptop or a shared printer. Your files never leave your iPhone unless you turn on iCloud backup or export them yourself.