Back to Security Overview

Personal Data Vault

Encryption doesn't have to be a black box. Let's explore how we use a "Double-Lock" strategy to keep your financial life private.

The "Mailbox & House Key" Analogy

Imagine your data is inside your house. How do we make sure only you can enter?

1. The Mailbox Key

Your Master Password is like a key to a small mailbox outside your house. This mailbox doesn't contain your money—it only contains the real key to your home.

MASTER PASSWORD (KEK)

2. The House Key

Inside the mailbox is your Data Encryption Key (DEK). This is a special, high-security key that actually unlocks your financial records. It never leaves your device in a way that anyone else can use.

DATA KEY (DEK)

The "600,000 Boxes" Challenge

To make it even harder for intruders, we don't just put the House Key in the mailbox. We place it inside 600,000 nested lockboxes. Every time you log in, your device uses your password to open each box one by one. This process takes about a second for you, but it's a nightmare for hackers.

Why Iterations Matter?

Hackers use "Brute Force"—trying millions of passwords every second using supercomputers.

Without 600k Iterations

4,000,000,000+

Guesses per second on a high-end GPU

Cracked in Minutes or Hours

With SMT's 600k Iterations

~6,500

Guesses per second (forced slowness)

Protected for Centuries

* Estimates based on modern high-performance GPU benchmarks (e.g., RTX 4090).

The Technical Blueprint

How your data flows from your brain to the secure database.

Your Master Password
600,000x
PBKDF2 (SHA-256)
Key Derivation
ResultKey Encryption Key (KEK)
Encrypts
Personal Data
Stored in
Firestore

What Data is Protected?

Our KEK/DEK architecture covers almost every piece of sensitive information you store in SimpleMoneyTracker.

Expenses

Description, Amount, Category, Mood, Date

Budgets

Budget Amounts, Timeframes

Debts & Lending

Lender/Borrower names, Amounts, Due dates, Notes

Financial Goals

Goal names, Target amounts, Progress records

Subscriptions

Service names, Providers, Costs, Billing cycles

Investments

Asset names, Initial/Current values, Performance notes

Contacts

Full names, Emails, Phones, Addresses, Company, Birthdays

Personal Notes

All titles and text content

Private Keys

Your RSA and ECDH private keys are also encrypted

Note: Every single field listed above is transformed into unreadable ciphertext before it leaves your device.

"We don't just lock your data; we build a fortress around it, where the only key that works is the one in your memory."

Personal Data Vault
    reCAPTCHA Enterprise Logo

    protected by reCAPTCHA