You Emailed a Photo of Your ID to a Landlord: What to Do Next
You were in a hurry, so you photographed your licence and emailed it to a landlord or employer. Now it sits in their inbox, your Sent folder and your camera roll. You cannot take the email back, but you can limit what it does.
Get an email when Cryptile is on the App Store
What do I need to know?
- An emailed photo is a copy you no longer control. It can sit in inboxes and backups for years.
- Most of the risk is the extra copies. Your own phone is the one you can clean up.
- Next time, send less. A cropped, marked photo is worth much less to a thief.
What should I do today?
- Ask what they keep. Email the sender. Ask them to confirm they will delete the photo after the decision.
- Delete your copies. Remove the photo from Photos, then empty Recently Deleted. Remove the email from Sent and from Trash.
- Watch your credit. If it was a full licence or passport, consider a credit freeze with the credit bureaus in your country.
- Check for odd mail or logins. Look for accounts you did not open.
- Change the password on the email account you used, if it is reused anywhere.
Short on time? Do steps 1 and 2.
How do I send an ID photo better next time?
- Ask if there is a secure upload portal. Use it instead of email.
- Crop out anything they do not need, such as the number on the back.
- Open the photo, tap Edit, then the Markup button, and write "For [company], [date] only" across it.
- In the share sheet, tap Options and turn off Location, so the photo carries no map position.
- Send it, then delete your copy.
Our guide to blurring part of a photo covers the redaction step.
What this doesn't protect against
Deleting your copies does not delete theirs. If the company's email is breached, the photo can leak whatever you do. Marking the photo makes it less useful to a thief, not useless.
Do it with Cryptile
Keep your ID photos in a vault, not your camera roll, so they never sit in your library or search. Cryptile photos are encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and the keys come from your pattern on your device. Move the photo out only when you need to send it.
A vault would not have stopped you emailing the photo, and it cannot take it back from the recipient. It stops the other copies, on your own phone and backups.
Cryptile is free to start, with encrypted iCloud backup included.