Backing Up Health & Activity Data

[silvetti]

Best tool to do this:
https://deciphertools.com/download-decipher-activity-transfer.html

 

[profets]

Best tool to do this:
https://deciphertools.com/download-decipher-activity-transfer.html

That's an interesting little tool, and a good idea. Interesting that it can strip an encrypted backup of everything but the health data.

 

[Zcott]

And it works great too.

 

[MrGimper]

I've seen something that does a similar thing with Messages. It creates an empty backup and grafts in your messages backup. Then when you restore this backup it's completely clean apart from your messages are there. I need to try it at some point.

 

[Mlrollin91]

Has anyone not had luck with the decipher tool? I'm looking to use it for my iPhone 7. I only want to retain health data. Obviously I will make a couple copies of the backup in case something goes wrong, but just wanted to get feedback on actually users.

 

[Zcott]

I've done it and it worked fine for me. Basically it creates a new backup with nothing but health data, which you then restore from.

 

[Mlrollin91]

I've done it and it worked fine for me. Basically it creates a new backup with nothing but health data, which you then restore from.

Awesome. I use to use the ibackupbot method which was manual copy and pasting files, but most of the time things went wrong. Very excited to stumble across this. Thanks!

 

[dangeng]

If you actually export it to iCloud drive as an example, you can then tap on the zip drive and choose open with and it will give you an option to import back into health app

The option above sounds definitely great and it would be amazing if it works!
Still waiting for all my health data to backup... 25 minutes already...

A few days ago I found also the "Decipher tools" and thought at first it was perfect.
But after a little while it made me think... How can it be possible to extract the health and activity data
from an encrypted backup... Hm? What else can they extract... Passwords etc.?
Any experience with that?

Would love to reset my iPhone completely and do a clean install with iOS 10 because I have some battery issues
lately. But don't want to lose my health and activity data...

Cheers, Daniel

 

[Mlrollin91]

A few days ago I found also the "Decipher tools" and thought at first it was perfect.
But after a little while it made me think... How can it be possible to extract the health and activity data
from an encrypted backup... Hm? What else can they extract... Passwords etc.?
Any experience with that?

What do you mean 'they'?

Its no different than other backup extractors. Except this one only targets health data.

My backup size went form 908MB to 118MB.

 

[dangeng]

What do you mean 'they'?

Its no different than other backup extractors. Except this one only targets health data.

My backup size went form 908MB to 118MB.

Well, with "they" I mean the Company behind Decipher tools...
If you buy the full version of their program you can obviously extract everything...like messages etc.
But included in the iPhone backup are also all the passwords etc. which is why it is encrypted.
So it seems that this company has found a way to decrypt the backup in order to extract the
health data and all of that...

Or am I wrong with that?

How can you extract or even find something in an encrypted "container/backup" if you don't
have the key to decrypt...?

Edit: I definitely don't want to accuse Decipher of bad intentions!!! I am just always super careful!!!

 

[Mlrollin91]

Well, with "they" I mean the Company behind Decipher tools...
If you buy the full version of their program you can obviously extract everything...like messages etc.
But included in the iPhone backup are also all the passwords etc. which is why it is encrypted.
So it seems that this company has found a way to decrypt the backup in order to extract the
health data and all of that...

Or am I wrong with that?

How can you extract or even find something in an encrypted "container/backup" if you don't
have the key to decrypt...?

Edit: I definitely don't want to accuse Decipher of bad intentions!!! I am just always super careful!!!

This is all local. You are not doing anything online. You download the app, you run your backup through it. It spits out a clean backup with only health data. No internet connection required. No server contact. Also, all its doing is dividing the backup, its not actually opening the activity or health information. If you were to open it, it requires the password. Its only sorting out the folder in which the data is held.

If you use ibackupbot, you can find the health data and copy and paste the folder. You can do whatever you want with it. But if you try to open, you are prompted with the password. The folder is locked to the encryption for access, but not for copy and pasting.

Btw passwords are stored on the device but are iCloud locked. So even if you restore an encrypted backup with passwords, you need to verify iCloud keychains before you can even access those passwords. This requires your security passcode or another iCloud device.

 

[dangeng]

This is all local. You are not doing anything online. You download the app, you run your backup through it. It spits out a clean backup with only health data. No internet connection required. No server contact. Also, all its doing is dividing the backup, its not actually opening the activity or health information. If you were to open it, it requires the password. Its only sorting out the folder in which the data is held.

If you use ibackupbot, you can find the health data and copy and paste the folder. You can do whatever you want with it. But if you try to open, you are prompted with the password. The folder is locked to the encryption for access, but not for copy and pasting.

Btw passwords are stored on the device but are iCloud locked. So even if you restore an encrypted backup with passwords, you need to verify iCloud keychains before you can even access those passwords. This requires your security passcode or another iCloud device.

Thanks a lot for your response...
Now I read more about the iPhone backups and it makes a lot of sense now!

Didn't know that everything on an iPhone etc. was backed up in separate files... Thought it is
one huge "container"-file with everything in it... In this case you'd need the encryption key in order
to open and parse/modify it...

Anyway, here is a great article that explains everything: http://www.datarecoveryforiphone.com/resource/all-about-itunes-backup-details-information.html

So Decipher-tools etc. "just" delete all the database that you don't want to restore...

Thanks again for pushing me in the right direction...

Cheers Daniel