Guides / Photos of your passport

Should you keep a photo of your passport?

Updated 3 November 2026 · By the FirstHour team

Short answerA copy can be useful, but it shouldn't sit loose in your camera roll. Keep one somewhere locked, delete extra copies, and keep another somewhere that isn't your phone. If your phone is lost or stolen, a loose passport photo goes with it.

Why a copy is useful

If a passport is lost or stolen, a copy can help. In the UK, for example, GOV.UK says you must cancel a lost or stolen passport as soon as possible, and that a photocopy or photo of it can help you answer the questions. Other countries run their own services, so check your passport office's website.

Why it's worth keeping safe

A passport's photo page shows your full name, birth date, nationality and passport number on one page. The FTC says identity thieves can use personal information, such as your name and address, to open accounts in your name, steal a tax refund or get medical care. A clear photo of that page hands over most of what they would need in one go.

What to do

  1. Find your copies. Here's how to look. Check chats too, since a copy you sent for a booking may still be there.
  2. Delete the extras. Deleted photos stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days. With iCloud Photos on, a deletion applies to all your devices. Empty Recently Deleted to remove them sooner. That can't be undone, so keep one copy first.
  3. Lock away the one you keep, in the Vault or another place with its own lock. Here's how the options compare.
  4. Keep a second copy away from your phone. A paper copy at home, stored apart from your passport, is our advice. A copy on a lost phone isn't much help.
  5. When someone asks for a copy, send a covered one where you can. Here's how. Some official places may need the full page, so send that only to them and only after checking you've reached the real one.

If a copy was shared or seen

You can't take back a picture someone already holds. Keep a copy of the messages if you plan to report it. Then delete what you can, and ask the person or service to delete it too. Whether a seen copy means replacing your passport is a question for your passport office, because the answer can differ by country. In our view, watch your accounts and credit for anything you don't recognise, and be careful with messages that mention your passport details.

The FTC lists steps for US readers: place a free credit freeze, consider a fraud alert, and report identity theft at IdentityTheft.gov to get a recovery plan. This is general information, not legal advice.

How FirstHour helps

Protect looks through your pictures on your iPhone for passports and other IDs, and shows them in a group called IDs and passports. It reads the machine-readable lines at the bottom of a passport's photo page and checks them, and it also notices a passport number next to personal details such as a birth date. Pictures stay blurred until you're ready, and you decide what happens to each, including moving it to the Vault. Nothing is uploaded.

It can miss things. Blurry, cropped or tilted pictures and handwriting are often missed. It may also miss ID cards written only in alphabets it reads less well, such as Hebrew, Persian, Bangla and Hindi. It doesn't check videos or your Hidden album, and it doesn't read PDFs, so a scanned passport saved as a PDF won't be found. It can't tell you whether a copy was seen.

Questions

Is the Hidden album enough?

It's better than the camera roll, but it opens with your Face ID, Touch ID or iPhone passcode. Anyone who knows your passcode can open it.

Can I keep the copy in a PDF instead?

A PDF has the same details in it, so it needs the same care. The Vault can hold PDFs, but FirstHour's picture check doesn't read them, so keep track of where yours are.

What about other IDs?

Our guide on photos of your ID covers the general case.

Sources

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