About Gaslight

What Gaslight is

Gaslight is a messaging app for iPhone and Android. There is no phone number, email address or password. Your identity is a UserID that your device generates from a recovery phrase, and you add people by UserID or by scanning their QR code. You can send text, photos, videos and voice messages.

Messages and media are encrypted on your device before they are sent. Gaslight’s servers carry and briefly hold encrypted data they cannot read.

What we protect

• Message and media content. Text, photos, videos and voice messages are encrypted on your device. We hold ciphertext and cannot read it.
• Your recovery phrase. It stays in your device’s secure keystore and is never sent to us.
• Who you are. We do not ask for or hold a phone number, email address, real name, contact list or location.
• Who you are talking to. A safety number, and a QR code to compare it, let the two of you check that no one else sits between you.

What we do not protect

• Profile pictures are not end-to-end encrypted. An avatar is stored as an ordinary image, reachable through a short-lived signed link issued to your contacts. Our storage provider could technically open it. Set no picture and nothing is stored.
• Media stays in storage until it is deleted. An encrypted file is kept until the message it belongs to is deleted for everyone. It is encrypted, but it is not gone when the message has been delivered.
• We cannot recover your account without the recovery phrase. We cannot reset it or issue a new one for the same identity. Lose the phrase and your device, and that identity is gone.
• We still hold connections and notification tokens. Our servers keep your UserID, the UserIDs you are connected to and when, a notification token for your device, and a last-seen time. Read receipts are timestamps if you leave them on. The Privacy Policy lists all of it and how long each item is kept.
• The other person keeps their copy. A conversation belongs to both people in it. Deleting your account or your messages does not delete theirs, and Vanishing Mode cannot stop them keeping a copy, for example by screenshot.
• A compromised device is not protected. Encryption protects messages in transit and on our servers. It does not help if someone else controls your phone or has your recovery phrase.

Delete and contact

You can delete your account from inside the app; the deletion page lists what is removed and what remains. Questions: support@thegaslight.app.