Encryption
Scribbo is different from other writing tools in many ways, particularly in its use of end-to-end encryption to store your data. This is a fancy way of saying that only you can read your stories: no one else, not even my company, can read what you’ve written. We do this because we know writing is a sacred and personal endeavor that requires complete privacy.
How it works
When you enter your password when logging into Scribbo, we create an encryption key. When Scribbo syncs to the cloud, before we send out any sensitive data, we first encrypt it with this key. The type of data that is considered sensitive is anything you write into text editing fields (story content, names of stories/scenes/sections). Other information, like your theme preference or story metadata (for example, the number of scenes in a section), is not encrypted.
How it makes some things hard
Software using end-to-end encryption is difficult to make user-friendly because, by definition, our servers can’t actually read your data directly. Scribbo relies on you and your devices to decrypt the data. This means some things you might take for granted in other applications are less user-friendly:
Forgetting your password
If you forget your password, you can’t use the typical “email me a code” workflow to get back into your account, because Scribbo cannot read any of your data without your password. Instead, Scribbo stores recovery keys on each device you’re signed in with that can be used to restore account access.
If, for some reason, you both forget your password and lose access to all the devices you’ve signed into Scribbo with, you’ll have no way of getting your Scribbo data back. There are a few ways you can mitigate this risk though:
- Regularly download recovery keys and store them someplace safe (ideally on cloud storage). You should do this every time your change your password.
- Regularly create manual backups. These are unencrypted copies of your whole Scribbo database you can put wherever you want.
Sharing
There is currently no way to natively “share” the synced version of your Scribbo stories with other people. Again, this is because all your data is encrypted on our servers and requires your password to decrypt it on-device. To share your stories, use one of Scribbo’s many export options to convert your story to common file formats.