Recovery

The phrase is the account.

Not a copy of it, not a key to it. The twenty-four words are the account, everywhere, forever. Everything below follows from that one fact.

If you lose the phone

Install Phaylos on the new device, choose I already have a recovery phrase, and type the twenty-four words in order. The same account appears, with the same balance and the same history. Nothing was stored on the old phone that the words do not reproduce.

Nothing needs to be done to the old phone first. Whoever has it cannot open the app without your face, fingerprint or device passcode, and the phrase is not in any backup they could restore from.

If you get a new phone the ordinary way

Restoring an iPhone from an iCloud or encrypted-iTunes backup does not bring your Phaylos account with it, on purpose. The phrase is stored with ThisDeviceOnly protection, which excludes it from every backup Apple takes. Type the words in.

If you add a new face or fingerprint

Enrolling a new Face ID face or Touch ID fingerprint invalidates the stored phrase, by design — otherwise anyone who could add their own face to your unlocked phone could open your account. Phaylos will ask for the twenty-four words again. Nothing is lost; it is the lock re-checking who you are.

If you lose the words

Then the account is gone. Not suspended, not recoverable with proof of identity, not restorable by us — gone, with whatever is in it, permanently.

Nobody can help, and anyone who offers is stealing from you. There is no Phaylos support process that restores an account, because there is no copy of your phrase anywhere for us to restore it from. Any person, site, DM or "support agent" who asks for your twenty-four words is taking your account. There is no exception, and we will never ask.

How to keep the words

  • On paper, in ink, in order. Paper does not get ransomwared, does not sync, and does not end up in a screenshot library.
  • Not in a photo, a note, a password manager's free-text field, a text message or an email to yourself. Every one of those has been the way somebody lost an account.
  • Two copies, two places. One at home, one somewhere a fire at home would not reach. Two copies is a bigger reduction in risk than any clever single hiding place.
  • Consider who inherits it. If nobody living can find your words, the account dies with you. If that matters, write the location into your estate documents — not the words themselves.

Checking a backup without risking it

A written phrase you have never tested is a guess. The safe test is to restore it onto a second device, or to delete and reinstall Phaylos on your own device and type the words back in. If the address that comes back is the same address, the paper is good. Do that once, early, while the account is close to empty.

What Phaylos checks for you

  • Every word is checked against the BIP-39 wordlist, so a misspelling is caught as you type rather than three months later.
  • The phrase's own checksum is verified, which catches a word written in the wrong order.
  • Every address you paste carries a checksum. A single wrong character is refused rather than sent.

None of that protects you from sending to the wrong valid address. It only protects you from sending to a mistyped one.