Keeping Your Records Secure – Recovery Phrase
When you create your digital space for your medical records with Aria, we will provide you with a 12-word Recovery Phrase. This is like a password which you will need whenever you first use the app on your mobile or tablet device. However, it has some unique features which makes it much safer than a password and ensures that your medical records stay completely private to you!
Better Than a Password
- Your Secret Key
Unlike a password which only gives you access to your account; this uniquely generated phrase is the ‘key’ to unlocking all your medical records.
Like a secret code, when your records are retrieved from your medical provider they are not stored in a readable format, but rather just as random letters and numbers. These can only be decoded with your unique recovery phrase.
If you’d like to know more about our encryption, see our article “Keeping Your Records Secure – Encrypting Your Medical Records”.
- Completely Private to You
Passwords are stored by the service provider, while this can be convenient if you forget your password, it takes away your privacy and exposes you to security threats. Your Recovery Phrase is given only to you. It’s not secretly copied and stored anywhere so no matter what, no one can access it without your permission. This is what ensures your records are completely safe and private to you.
- As Unique as You Are
Unlike a password, your recovery phase is generated using advanced encryption and can never be changed. You are the only person in the world to hold your individual recovery phrase. It is forever linked to your profile and so there is no way for someone to try and change it to access your records.
Protecting Your Recovery Phrase
You’ll notice in other accounts, there is a “Forgot Password?” option. The issue with this is that that means a company is storing your password. So if someone hacks into them or they choice to misuse the information you’ve entrusted them with (such as by putting in a new clause in their Terms and Conditions), then they can access your data.
With us, there is no “Forgot Recovery Phrase” option which makes it super important that you store your Recovery Phrase safely. If you do lose it then you won’t be able to get back into your profile.
However, we try to make it as easy as possible for you to protect yourself, with these options:
- Store it yourself
We give you the option to ‘copy to clipboard’ – this allows you to save the phrase to a note or other file in seconds. We recommend you use a secure password storing application such as KeePass or 1Password.
- Entrust it to your friends and family
We give you a quick option to send it to loved ones via email. Although don’t worry, they can’t access your records only with your recovery phrase, we always verify that it’s you using your recovery phrase.
- Opt to store with Aria.
This is not our favourite choice, but we want you to decide whether convenience or privacy is more important to you. If you choose to rely on us, then we promise to be extremely careful about storing your phrase by encrypting it and storing it offline.
We hope that gives you a good understanding of how important your Recovery Phrase is and how to keep it safe. If you want to know more about how we protect your records, check out our other posts in our “Keeping Your Records Secure” blog series.
For any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at aria@myaria.health
- Store it yourself