Everything you do disappears automatically when you shut down Tails.

But you can save some of your files and configuration in an encrypted Persistent Storage on your Tails USB stick, for example:

  • Your documents

  • Your Wi-Fi passwords

  • Your browser bookmarks

  • ...

The Persistent Storage is an encrypted partition protected by a passphrase that occupies all the free space left on the USB stick.

Everything in the Persistent Storage is encrypted automatically.

You can choose to unlock your Persistent Storage or not each time you start Tails.

The Persistent Storage is not hidden. An attacker in possession of your USB stick can know that there is a Persistent Storage. Take into consideration that you could be forced or tricked to give out its passphrase.

How strong is the encryption of the Persistent Storage?

The encryption of the Persistent Storage uses LUKS and DMCrypt.

LUKS and DMCrypt are the standard system for disk encryption in Linux. Tails uses their default encryption parameters, which are considered highly secure. This is the same technique as we recommend for creating and using encrypted volumes in general.

The weakest point of such encryption is often the passphrase chosen by the user.

We recommend choosing a long passphrase made of 5 to 7 random words. Learn about the maths behind memorizable and secure passphrases.

To learn more about how the Persistent Storage is implemented, see our design documentation.