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I am a European resident trying to recover years of text/photo diary entries from an iPhone app called Momento. The app lost my on-device data and does not seem to recognize my iCloud backup. It clearly exists, however, as you can see below. Apple Support told me to contact the developer, but a week in, the developer has not responded.

I used the Apple Data and Privacy feature to download iCloud data, but I got only my iCloud Drive files, not the 4.1 GB in the Momento CloudKit(?) partition.

I understand that Apple would like me to make a GDPR request to the developer, and I already have. However, given that this data resides on Apple’s iCloud servers, can I get the data from Apple, possibly via a GDPR request? How would I do so?

iCloud Storage with 4.1GB in Momento storage

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  • Do you have any backup copies of the IPA or app to try and determine the equivalent of com.apple.mail string that was used to identify this San o Ed bucket of data ?
    – bmike ♦
    Dec 9, 2021 at 11:16

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Apple has a data privacy page that covers how to make requests for your data stored by Apple.

december 2021 screen capture of the data request web page

From there, request your other data:

enter image description here

Opening a case with apple after inspecting the other data might be needed - I can’t test your bucket as I don’t have that app or data stored against that container type / identifier.

Hopefully that bucket is not end to end encrypted, since Apple does not provide that data as a standard or listed non-standard request on the data request faq. your data seems to meet the other two requirements,

Any data that isn’t provided is either in a form that is not personally identifiable or linked to your Apple ID, is stored in an end-to-end encrypted format that Apple cannot decrypt, or is not stored by Apple at all.

I have emphasized the exception you may be facing. Also, have you ever made any backups of the phone? You might still have that data on the phone and be able to retrieve it from a physical / local backup since you will control encryption and/or have access to the keys if the backup does get (or was done) encrypted.

In your case if you sign in to iCloud on a new(ish) version of macOS you should get all the files synchronized to your home folder library.

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents

If your application identifier is com.d3i.momento then it's data should be located in the folder iCloud~com~d3i~momento within the Mobile Documents portion of your library if the developer just stored apps within the app bundle. If they stored the data inside a group bundle, there will be letters and numbers before the folder like F6266T9T75~iCloud~com~d3i~momento

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  • Yes, I requested a copy of my data and they sent me the iCloud Drive, but for "Other Data" they said there was a processing error. However when I looked at the details of "Other Data" it didn't seem like it would be relevant anyway. I don't believe the Momento data is encrypted because their FAQ specifically says to be careful with backups: "Backup files are not encrypted or considered secure."
    – ed94133
    Dec 9, 2021 at 13:54
  • @ed94133 iCloud containers are very much not backups and I guarantee they are encrypted. The question is by which key and is that key entangled with another key that Apple has ever had possession of. I would request other only a second time. Get them to fix the “processing errors” and deliver the data or fix the errors cloud side.
    – bmike ♦
    Dec 9, 2021 at 15:30
  • Ok thanks will try. Just so frustrating. I'm sure my data is in those 4 GB stored in iCloud. I did find the bundle identifier, com.d3i.momento, if that helps in any way.
    – ed94133
    Dec 9, 2021 at 20:37
  • Let's hope you can get at it from a Mac @ed94133 - see my edit moments ago
    – bmike ♦
    Dec 9, 2021 at 20:48
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    Not at all @ed94133. I would encourage you to make an answer. You learned a lot along the way and won’t be the first to want to so something very reasonable like this. Many great nuggets of info here you have provided and documented
    – bmike ♦
    Dec 10, 2021 at 11:00
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For this specific app: you need to turn iCloud on in settings and then be very patient with "Restore Backup." I had to try about 6 times before anything came back, then got only a partial restore. I then re-restored and everything came back.

Apparently a lot of this has to do with iCloud itself being a little wonky/unpredictable, so my takeaway is that if you have GB of app data stored in iCloud, prepare for a lot of errors and re-tries.

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