Using your phone to take pictures of driver's licenses or other important documents is really common, but not very secure. Pictures of personally identifiable information (PII), such as IDs, PINs, or other sensitive information, can be used by bad actors to steal your identity or banking information. Malwarebytes' Photo Guard feature can help you keep track of sensitive information on your iPhone by scanning your photos and alerting you if it detects any PII.
If Photo Guard finds photos with sensitive information, you can review them and choose to delete them from your phone. Didn't mean to delete that photo? No worries! Deleted photos go to your Recently Deleted album in your Photos app, where you can recover them for up to 30 days. If you don't want to delete a photo, you can add it to your Hidden album instead.
The Photo Guard feature is a safe and secure way to keep your photos private and clear of any sensitive information. All scans happen locally on your device, and your photos are never sent to Malwarebytes.
Run a Photo Guard Scan on your iPhone
To run a Photo Guard Scan:
- Open the Malwarebytes app on your iPhone.
- Scroll down to Photo Guard and tap Scan.
- On the Photo Guard screen, tap Scan my photos.
- If you are scanning your photos for the first time, tap Allow Full Access in the iOS pop up for a complete scan of your photo library.
- Note: Malwarebytes needs full access to be able to scan all photos in your library for sensitive information. You can remove Malwarebytes' access to your photos at any time in your iOS settings.
- Tap Scan photos to begin a Photo Guard Scan.
- Note: Scanning photos that are hosted on your iCloud can use a lot of data. To save on data usage, Malwarebytes only uses Wi-Fi to scan by default. If you want to use both Wifi and data, or just scan images downloaded to your device, tap iCloud downloads and select Wi-Fi or cellular or Local photos only.
- Depending on how many photos you have on your phone, it may take a while for the Photo Guard scan to finish. A progress bar is shown on the Photo Guard page so you can see how many photos have been scanned.
- Malwarebytes will notify you once the scan is finished.
Review Photo Guard findings
After Photo Guard scans your phone, you can review the photos containing sensitive information and delete any you no longer want.
To review photos:
- Open the Malwarebytes app on your iPhone.
- Scroll down to Photo Guard and tap Review.
- Tap Review [x] photos.
- On the Review photos screen, tap an image to get more information on what type of PII was found and why it may be risky.
- From the image view, you can tap:
- Delete photo - This will move the photo into your phone's Recently Deleted album in Photos.
- Add to hidden - This will move the photo into your phone's Hidden album in Photos.
- Keep photo - This will remove the photo from the Photo Guard findings.