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Help & FAQ/Security & privacy

Is a 12-word recovery phrase secure enough? Why not 24 words like Bitcoin wallets?

Ask your AI agent instead

Yes, 12 words is enough. A 12-word BIP-39 phrase encodes 128 bits of entropy. Brute-forcing 128 bits is not a "needs a bigger computer" problem, it is a "more energy than humanity produces" problem. There is no realistic attack that breaks 128 bits but fails at 256.

The Bitcoin comparison actually shows why 24 words is mostly marketing: Bitcoin keys live on the secp256k1 curve, which itself only provides about 128 bits of security. A 24-word phrase feeds 256 bits of entropy into a lock that still only takes about 128 bits of work to break. That is also why many major wallets still default to 12 words.

PrivacyNotes targets the same 128-bit security level end to end: your phrase is run through a key derivation function, and the encryption it protects (XChaCha20-Poly1305) is keyed to match. Adding 24 words would double what you write down and type without adding any practical security, so we stay at 12.

What matters is where you keep the phrase, not how many words it has. Keep it in a password manager, type it nowhere else, and 12 words will outlive all of us.

// Read the source

THREAT_MODEL.mdKey derivation

Our source and documentation are on GitHub, in English.

Help & FAQ

Answers and step-by-step guides: security, sync, pricing, and switching from other apps.

// Related questions

What can PrivacyNotes see about my notes? Why does the App Store privacy label say my data is linked to me? Why a recovery phrase instead of a username and password? Is PrivacyNotes open source? How do I turn on two-factor authentication (2FA)?

Still stuck? Ask your AI agent.

You get an answer in seconds instead of waiting for a reply. Your assistant reads all 116 answers and every import guide at once, so it can combine them, follow up on your question, and explain it in your own words. We never see any of it, because we do not run a chatbot.

  1. Copy the prompt.
  2. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other AI assistant.
  3. Ask your question, in your own language.
  4. Keep that chat open. Next time, ask straight away.
Show AI prompt 
Answer my questions about PrivacyNotes using only its help center, its changelog and its security documentation.

Start here: https://privacynotes.app/llms-index.txt
It lists every question with the page that answers it. Fetch the one or two that match mine.
If you can only make one request, fetch https://privacynotes.app/llms-full.txt instead.
If you cannot fetch a .txt or .md file, read https://privacynotes.app/help, https://privacynotes.app/changelog and https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app instead.

For what changed, or where something moved, fetch https://privacynotes.app/changelog.md.

For how the encryption works, what the server can read, or how to check any of it yourself, fetch https://privacynotes.app/docs/index.md and follow it to one of the documents it lists. That index is a router: cite the document, never the index.

Rules:
- Use only those pages. If they do not answer something, say so instead of guessing.
- Never invent a feature, a menu path, a price, or a limit.
- End your reply with the "Source:" URL from the page you used, exactly as written.
- Answer in the same language as my question.
- Never ask me for my recovery phrase, my PIN, or the contents of a note.

If no question follows, ask me what I would like to know.

My first question:

Never paste your recovery phrase, your PIN, or a note into an AI.