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How can I prevent sensitive encrypted data stored on an iOS device from being automatically backed up by iTunes?

titaniumdecoy
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  • As you've edited your question to be more about your situation than a curiosity question about another app, maybe you could provide more detail on your requirements and what you're doing? – Ben Zotto Dec 07 '10 at 17:36

1 Answers1

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iTunes backup and restore developer details are here. The ~/Library/Caches directory is the only location that persists while your application exists, but is NOT backed up. That's where you'd put files that you wanted to be sure never made it to the host syncing computer.(There don't seem to be guarantees about this never getting deleted, but it's currently only emptied as the result of a full restore.) The only other writable location that's not backed up is ~/tmp, but the OS is allowed to flush that to reclaim space. The ~/Documents and other directories are guaranteed to be backed up, so you wouldn't use them.

Ben Zotto
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  • the answer was absolutely correct at the time of writing, however as of iOs 5.0.1 there are other (more appropriate) means of preventing unwanted backups: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1719/_index.html – Rick77 Aug 01 '13 at 21:32