FAQ / Secure Chat

When you start a conversation, the setting is in Secure Mode by default. You can easily change to Normal Mode if you wish. 

In Secure Mode: All messages will be marked with  a “lock” icon. It means that messages are encrypted by an End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) algorithm. Only you and members in the conversation can read the messages. You are SAFE when your chat includes sensitive content. 
You are safe, but you may experience some disadvantages such as: 

1. Slower speed: We need to decrypt your messages by a Shared Key. This may cause the speed while chatting to be affected. 

2. Searching messages: It’s not exactly for search results due to messages being encrypted.

3. Unable decrypt encrypted message due to Change account Password: We use a Shared Key, which is associated with Account Password. This means that if you change or reset to a new Password, some disadvantage in decrypting encrypted messages may occur. 

In Normal Mode: The speed in sending a message will not be affected but you may be at risk because the Man-in-the-Middle (MitM, black hat) can attach in between to pull out your important messages.
When you start a conversation in SafeChat, it’s set up in Secure Mode by default with  E2EE. This means that no one except you and members in the conversation can read the messages (even SafeChat can’t read).

See more for details at (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_encryption).
When the message is unable to be decrypted it will have status “Encrypted”
Because you are chatting in Secure Mode and you or someone related to the conversation has changed password. It makes you unable to match the Shared Key to decrypt the messages.
When you see the message changed to “Encrypted,” you will be unable to keep sending messages. To decrypt encrypted messages and keep chatting with your friends we suggest these  ways to recover the messages:

1. Input your old password in case you have changed or reset the password.

2. Ask any of your friends in the encrypted chat to open the SafeChat app to the conversation online. Our system will recover as many of the messages as possible.

3. In case all users of the conversation changed their passwords, we won’t be able to recover the messages.  We recommend you keep chatting by activating the Normal Mode for the time being to keep communicating with your friends. You can also choose reset the conversation and keep chatting with Secure Mode (the old messages will be cleared) 

4. A short way, you can contact the group’s admin to remove you from the group and re-add you with allow to see history. (for group chat only).
Please click on the Question mark icon next to “Encrypted” then follow the directions.