Harassing, threatening or defrauding another person breaks CHANNEL's terms of service, as does attacking the app, the mailbox server or anybody else's device. Using CHANNEL to hurt people is not allowed.
Abuse and crimes are reported to the police, not to CHANNEL. CHANNEL cannot read your messages, has no account for a person and cannot tell who holds a profile, so it cannot identify anyone and cannot block anyone for you. It does not review, investigate or act on reports or support messages about other people, and it does not step into anyone's conversations. A message to support creates no obligation: CHANNEL may consider changes to the app, and nobody should expect the app's services to come to the rescue.
That is why the protections below are in your hands. Each one works on your own device, without anybody's help.
Block is in a conversation's menu in the Messages list and on a contact in the Contacts list. A blocked person cannot reach you, and is not told. Blocking someone also stops their phone from ringing yours, reaching your mailbox, or recognising you nearby. Blocking keeps the conversation: the messages and attachments you already have stay, and Unblock shows them again. Blocked in Settings lists everyone you have blocked, and unblocks them.
Report…, in a conversation's ⋯ menu, blocks the person on this device and makes the evidence file of the conversation for you to give to the police. Export for the Police… makes the file and opens your phone's share menu, where you choose where it goes. Nothing is sent to CHANNEL. See Messages, Reporting.
A stranger who finds you reaches you as a request, not as a conversation. You see the name they call themselves and the value they used, and you choose Accept, Decline or Block. Nobody is told which you chose.
A person who is not a contact can ask at most three times a day at each handle, number or address you publish. Decline five of their requests in a row and they are blocked. Group invitations work the same way. See Messages, Repeated requests.
Strangers can only find you at what a profile advertises. A profile that advertises nothing cannot be found by anybody who has one of your numbers or addresses. A handle reveals neither your number nor your address, so it is the safer thing to publish on a profile strangers can reach. See Being found, Choosing what each profile advertises and Handles.
Each profile has its own keys, contacts and conversations. Keep one for people you know and another for people you do not, and give the second only a handle. See Getting started.
A PIN on one profile, or on one conversation, keeps a person who picks up your phone from reading it. A locked conversation shows only its name in the Messages list, and its notifications say only New message. See Privacy on this device.
A conversation belongs to both people in it. Export Conversation, under More on iPhone and in the long-press menu on Android, writes it to a file; choose Plain Text for a copy anyone can read. Report… makes the evidence file instead: the whole conversation with its photos, videos and files, and a fingerprint that shows the file has not been changed. Give the file to the police yourself; conversations exported by several people may help the police see a pattern alongside other evidence. Export before you delete it, because a deleted conversation cannot be exported. The file names you, the other people and their key fingerprints, so think about who you give it to. See Messages, Exporting a conversation and Reporting.
Mute silences a conversation's notifications. Delete removes a conversation's messages from this device, and Clear Messages empties it. Both are in the conversation's menu in the Messages list. See Getting started.
Never save, screenshot, export or forward it: having or sharing it is a crime even to report it. Report it at report.cybertip.org or to the police where you are, and say what you saw and when. Choose Text only in the evidence file if you still want a record of the conversation, and block the sender. See Messages, Reporting.
English is the reference text; any translation is a convenience.
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