Answers
How does encrypted sync work?
Encrypted sync encrypts each note on your device before it is uploaded, so the sync server only ever stores scrambled data it has no key for. Your other devices download that data and decrypt it with the same key, which they get from you — not from the server.
Step by step
- You set up the first device, which creates your key — in Prevon’s case, from a 12-word Recovery Seed.
- Each time a note changes, the device encrypts it and uploads the encrypted copy.
- Your second device, unlocked with the same seed, downloads the encrypted copy and decrypts it locally.
- The server never sees the key, so it can store and hand back your data but never read it.
What a sync server can still see
Even with end-to-end encryption, a server sees that some device uploaded some amount of data at some time. Good designs reduce what that metadata reveals — for example by not keeping an account table linking data to a person — but timing and size are hard to hide entirely.
Prevon’s sync is switched off
Prevon’s sync is called Ghost Sync. It is designed so that stored data is not filed under an account or a name, and the server cannot tell whose data is whose. It is built, but switched off in the private beta: today nothing you write leaves the device you wrote it on. It ships only once it has survived the beta. Read the design.
Prevon is in a private beta and has not had an independent security audit. It is designed so that we cannot read your notes; until someone outside the company has checked that, “designed” is the accurate word.
Prevon is in private beta.
There is no public download yet. Leave an email and we write once, when it opens to everyone.