Your Samsung Galaxy Has Two New Security Features

On Wednesday, Samsung published a blog post, "The Knox Journals," highlighting two new security features: Private Sharing in Quick Share, and Enhanced Data Protection for data saved to Samsung Cloud. If you have a Samsung Galaxy device, particularly a Galaxy S24, you can try out these two new security features right now.

Private Sharing in Quick Share

Samsung's Quick Share feature, which lets you send files instantly to up to five other Android devices, is gaining a privacy upgrade. "Private Sharing" works alongside Quick Share to protect your privacy when you share files to other devices in a few ways.

With it, you can choose specific contacts that can actually view the files you're sending, so those contacts won't be able to share your files with anyone else. You can choose how long you'd like shared files to remain accessible to others: Once that time limit expires, access to those files expires as well. You can also choose to make these files read-only and block screenshotting, so recipients won't be able to edit or alter the files you send, and you can see when they both received and opened the file.

With the feature, you can share up to 20 files in one go, as long as those files don't exceed 200MB. Samsung says all Private Sharing files are encrypted.

You can use Private Sharing the same way you use Quick Share: Choose the file you want to send, then tap Share. From here, tap Quick Share, then tap the three dots to open the expanded menu, choose Turn on Private Sharing, and send away. After you send the file or files, you'll be able to edit any of the permissions.

The only downside here is the feature only works with Samsung devices: While Quick Share is compatible with other Android devices, you won't be able to use Private Sharing unless the recipients are also rocking Samsung phones or tablets.

Samsung has talked about Privacy Sharing in Quick Share materials before, so it isn't a brand new idea. But it does appear to be rolling out now.

Enhanced Data Protection

Samsung also announced expanded protections for data you store in the Samsung Cloud-assuming you have a Galaxy S24. When Enhanced Data Protection is enabled on your Galaxy S24, the data you save in Samsung Cloud is end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), which means only you can access that data from the device in question. (Not even Samsung has access to E2EE data.)

You can enable Enhanced Data Protection from the Samsung Cloud app. From here, tap the three dots to open the expanded menu, then go to Settings > Enhanced Data Protection. (You can also find the options in Security and Privacy in your Galaxy's device Settings.) Here, you can choose whether to encrypt your phone's backup data, synced data, or both.

When you set up Enhanced Data Protection, Samsung will give you a recovery code to write down. Don't lose this: If you lose your device with E2EE, you will need this code to recover your data. Without it, you'll lose all encrypted data for good.