Create a Persona Seed Phrase

After creating and connecting an account, you'll return to NEAR Personas and be greeted with this screen:

Because this is a new Persona, you'll want to select option 1 which will expand and give you your seed phrase/set it for the account.

Blockchain applications rely on cryptography to give users 100% control of their funds and data. A public and private keypair is produced and usually a 12 or 24 word mnemonic (seed phrase) is provided to the user.  That seed phrase controls the account - whether it is funds or data.  NEAR Personas provides a 12 word seed phrase.

There is no recovery mechanism.  You lose control of it and it's gone.  You should copy your seed phrase down (order of the words matters) and keep it in a safe/secure place offline.  Many people stamp their seed phrases into metal and store them in fireproof safes (really good idea, especially if there are large sums of funds or important data involved).

When you set the seed phrase - it stores the private key in the localstorage of your browser.  Whenever you return to NEAR Personas you'll notice that you'll still be logged in if you didn't sign out.  Signing out deletes that private key from from localstorage and a new one is created the next time you sign in.

It is possible that your browser localstorage may get cleared which may then remove your access.  That's when you would need to use option 2 and recover your account using your seed phrase.  Note that you can also access this screen via the hamburger menu and choosing restore persona.

You may also want to start over with your persona.  You can do that by creating a new seed phrase and setting it for your account.  Just keep in mind that doing so will mean you lose access to any data you had associated with your old seed phrase.