Am I Secure? Forensic Scan vs OpenManual
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Am I Secure? Forensic Scan
This app provides advanced security scanning to detect malware, spyware, and viruses. It goes beyond basic checks with deep forensic analysis and AI-driven threat detection, offering manual review by cybersecurity experts for confirmed threats.
- Advanced security scanning
- Detects malware, spyware, and viruses
- Deep forensic analysis
- AI-driven threat detection
- Manual review by experts
- Anomaly-based analysis
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Am I Secure? performs forensic analysis of your iPhone or iPad to find signs of compromise. If you are a journalist, activist, executive, lawyer, government official or anyone with reason to think you may be of interest to a sophisticated adversary, this app is built for you. The same applies if you hold digital assets in self-custody. The device holding your keys is the target, and that device is what Am I Secure? examines. WHAT A COMPROMISED DEVICE MEANS Your whole life is on your phone. Private messages, email, photos, contacts, financial information. If you can read it, so can someone who has compromised the device. Encryption protects your messages in transit; it does not protect anything once the device itself is under someone else's control. An attacker in that position can read your messages before they are encrypted and after they are decrypted, see your location, take your stored credentials, and reach any account you are signed in to. They can listen through the microphone to conversations in the room, record through the camera, and follow your movements. There is generally no way to tell from using the device. WHY THIS REQUIRES A DIFFERENT APPROACH iOS is among the most secure consumer platforms available. iOS does not let any app, including security apps, look outside its own container or "sandbox". No security app on your device can inspect the processes, the filesystem, or the behavior of the rest of the system. That is a deliberate security property of the platform, and it is why an app running on your phone can only report on your settings, not on what is actually running. Am I Secure? works differently. You generate a system diagnostic "sysdiagnose" file using the tool built into iOS. That file is produced by the operating system itself, not by us, and it contains a detailed record of processes, logs, and system state. You share that file with the app, which uploads it to our servers. We analyze it and report what we find. The diagnostic file is end-to-end encrypted on your device before it is uploaded and stays encrypted until it reaches hardware we own and operate in our own facilities in Canada and the European Union (EU). It is not decrypted or accessible by any third party, including intermediary data center and network operators. Once analysis is complete the file is deleted. A HUMAN REVIEWS ANYTHING UNUSUAL Where our automated analysis flags something, our team examines the results by hand before anything is reported to you. The same automated analysis pipeline is used by our government clients via our on-premises Private Protection suite. WE LOOK FOR ANOMALIES, NOT JUST KNOWN INDICATORS Most detection tools match against published indicators of compromise. The moment those indicators become public, the operators behind commercial surveillance tools change their software to avoid them, and signature matching stops working against the new version. We compare your device against a baseline of expected iOS behavior instead. That can surface anomalies that do not match public indicators. MEDIA COVERAGE Reviewed by Forbes cybersecurity contributor Davey Winder in December 2024, who wrote he was "very impressed with the capabilities of this app." WHAT ELSE THE APP CHECKS, FOR EVERYONE • Whether your iOS version is current, overall and for your specific device • Lockdown Mode status • Lock screen, passcode, and biometric configuration • iCloud Private Relay and VPN status • Whether connections to well-known sites are being intercepted or inspected • Third-party keyboards installed on the device • Device integrity • Your processor's security features, network details, and diagnostic information SUBSCRIPTION The Advanced Security Scan requires a subscription, available as an in-app purchase (monthly or annual). For the Government & Enterprise Edition, search for Am I Secure? Endpoint Security here on the App Store. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
OpenManual
Locate lost or inaccessible product manuals by scanning device labels or barcodes. It searches manufacturer sites, archives, and the open web to find documentation, even for discontinued items. Saved manuals are available offline and can be queried for specific answers.
- Scan labels and barcodes to identify products
- Search manufacturer sites and archives
- Offline access to saved manuals
- Query saved manuals for specific answers
- Handles discontinued products
- Supports various household and professional equipment
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The manual is never around when you actually need it. It came in a box you recycled years ago, or it's in a drawer somewhere, or the company that made the thing doesn't even exist anymore. Meanwhile the thing is sitting right in front of you blinking and all you want to know is what the light means. So OpenManual starts where you already are, which is standing next to it. Point your camera at the label. Everything has one somewhere, whether it's a sticker on the back, a plate screwed to the side, or tiny type stamped into the plastic. OpenManual reads it and figures out which part is the brand and which part is the model, because those two are almost never labeled and the whole search depends on getting them right. If you can't get to the label, take a photo of it, scan the barcode on the box, or just type in what you know. Then it goes looking where manuals live. The maker's support site, the Internet Archive, which keeps documents long after a product is gone, and the open web get asked, so one engine having a bad day doesn't sink it. If the first pass comes up short, it reads what went wrong and searches again. The maker's own copy comes first. With Apple Intelligence, the phone's model reads the label, and Refine searches locally lets it sort results and plan a harder search. It finds documents but it never decides for you, and that's on purpose. Every result shows you the cover of the actual file, tells you what site it came from, and says in plain words how well it matches. If a document only half fits your device it says so instead of handing it over and hoping you don't notice. Nothing gets saved until you say yes. Sometimes the manual is real and sitting behind a login or a paywall. OpenManual won't sign in, pay, or sneak around a gate, so it just tells you where the document is and lets you go get it yourself. That felt more honest than pretending nothing turned up. Anything you keep stays on your phone (and in any backup of it) and works offline, which matters when you're in a basement and the signal gives up. Ask a question about a manual you saved and the answer comes straight from the document with the page shown, so you can check that it really says that. It works on the stuff that fills a house, a shop, or a building: • Washers, dryers, fridges, dishwashers, ovens • Furnaces, heat pumps, water heaters, thermostats • Drills, saws, mowers, pressure washers, generators • Printers, routers, TVs, cameras • The mystery unit in the garage that was already there when you moved in It also does medical and lab equipment, which is honestly why I built it. I spend my days supporting operating rooms, and I've spent a lot of that time hunting down IFUs for devices that went out of production a decade ago. So scan the UDI barcode on a device label and the whole device lands on one page: what it is, verified against the FDA's public registry, this unit's lot, serial and expiry, the instructions for use, recalls, adverse event reports split by what happened, and its class and regulation. It knows a REF from a serial from a lot number, and an IFU from a service manual from a cleaning guide. A few things worth knowing before you download it: • Three saved devices are free, no account, no sign up • One purchase lifts the limit forever and nothing renews • Saved manuals work offline • You confirm every document before it gets kept • It runs on iPhone and iPad One last thing, because it matters. OpenManual finds documentation and quotes it. It doesn't diagnose problems, it doesn't tell you whether something is safe to run, and it's not a substitute for someone who actually knows the machine. When it can't find your manual it says so, because being confidently wrong is worse than being honest.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: OpenManual at every 2 days against Am I Secure? Forensic Scan's monthly. OpenManual also leads on monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Am I Secure? Forensic Scan's advantage is ratings volume (80 vs 1) and iOS requirement (16.6 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Am I Secure? Forensic Scan sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month and OpenManual sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
OpenManual holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Am I Secure? Forensic Scan has 80 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Am I Secure? Forensic Scan ships an update monthly, OpenManual every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 17, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Am I Secure? Forensic Scan | OpenManual |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (80 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 81.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 80 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 16.6 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 22 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Numbers Station Inc | Gunnar Hostetler |
Customer experience
Am I Secure? Forensic Scan
OpenManual
In-app purchases
Am I Secure? Forensic Scan
- Advanced Threat Detection$9.991 Month
- Advanced Threat Detection$24.993 Months
- Advanced Threat Detection$34.996 Months
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- Advanced Threat Detection$49.991 Year
OpenManual
- Lifetime Unlock$4.99
Questions
Is Am I Secure? Forensic Scan free?
Is OpenManual free?
Which has better reviews, Am I Secure? Forensic Scan or OpenManual?
Do Am I Secure? Forensic Scan or OpenManual have ads?
Which is updated more often, Am I Secure? Forensic Scan or OpenManual?
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