How do I find my key for a secure form entry?

  • Jadekinsj
    Asked on February 27, 2017 at 9:37 PM

    It says I have to upload something but there is nothing on my computer?

    Please help

  • Support_Management Jotform Support
    Replied on February 28, 2017 at 3:19 AM

    The Private Key would be (and should be) saved on your computer. The moment you enabled Form Encryption, you were asked to download it. If you forgot where you saved it, lost it, etc., I'm afraid there's nothing we can do and there's no way to decrypt your submission data unless you have the original Private Key.

    That's one of the advantages of encryption. It ensures only you, as the owner, who has the key, can decrypt it. No one else can, even us. At the same time, it's also a disadvantage if you lost your key.

    Here's a snippet from a very detailed guide we have for Form Encryption:

    What happens with submissions if we lose the private key?

    If you have lost the private key, then there is not much that you can do - it means that your encrypted data is lost forever, there is no copy of the same on our servers and it is not possible to crack the one that you had.

    The only recommendation is to turn off encryption right away on each form so that you can start receiving the submissions - which you will be able to see (as the encryption is turned off), while you can leave the encrypted submissions in your Submissions Panel in case you find the key at some later point in time.

    I highly recommend you either thoroughly read and review our guide about Form Encryption.

    Complete guide: What-Are-Encrypted-Forms-and-How-to-Use-Them-as-Expert

    Or, just disable it since it's not a requirement to begin with. All forms you create with JotForm are already secured by default, and your Submission Data are also secured. Encryption is just an optional, added layer of security which will limit other features when enabled. Here's another snippet from the guide above:

    Important:

    Some of the features that are not available for Encrypted Forms* are:

    1. PDF Downloads,

    2. Reports (this includes downloading Excel and CSV files from within Submission Panel),

    3. Emails that contain form data in them.

    * All server side gathered and processed data can only be retrieved in encrypted form because your private key is never sent to our servers.