Our server

Our server exists for one reason: to hold a sealed message until the phone it is for comes to collect it. It is a mailbox, and nothing more.

What it does

• A sender deposits a sealed envelope under a token that only the two paired phones can compute. The token changes over time.
• The recipient's phone asks, on its own schedule, whether anything is waiting under its tokens, and takes it.
• Envelopes are deleted when they are collected, or when they expire.
• Anything unlawful held there can be reported at channelmessenger.net/removal.html; we delete a reported object within 48 hours.

What it learns

• That some phone deposited an envelope of a certain size at a certain time, and that some phone collected it.
• The network address of whoever connected, for as long as the connection lasts.

What it never sees

• Who you are, who you are talking to, or what you said. There are no accounts. Nothing on the server links a token to a person, a number, or another token.
• Your contacts, your number, your name, or your card.
• Whether a number "is on CHANNEL". An invitation left at a number is accepted whether or not anyone will ever collect it, so the answer is always the same. A number you publish under Find me by is the exception: anyone who already has it can confirm it is on CHANNEL, which is what publishing it is for.

When it is used

Only as a fallback. If a radio can see the contact, the message goes by radio and the server never sees it. See Reach.

Choosing not to use it at all

Settings › Reach › Internet turns the mailbox off for a profile. Messages then travel only when the two phones are near each other, or by way of a phone carrying for you. A contact whose phone is in range, and showed it was theirs in the last five minutes, still gets a message by Bluetooth with no internet at all.

A different thing with a similar name

Settings › Relay › Relay for Others is not about this server. It is about this device carrying sealed mail for other people and handing it on when it meets them. See Reach.

English is the reference text; any translation is a convenience.