Group chat that protects the people in it.
Some members need to talk without anyone else listening, whether that is a partner, an employer, a government or a company. So group chat is built to keep conversations private, including from us.
- End-to-end encrypted. A message is sealed on your phone and can only be opened by the people in the group. Labora Collective cannot read it, and neither can the companies we use.
- Nothing shows on a locked phone. Phone alerts say only "You have new messages." You can choose to see the group and who wrote in Settings. Emails say who wrote and in which group, never the words.
- New members cannot read the past. When someone joins, the group gets a new key, so they see only what comes after.
- Removing a message erases it, the words and who wrote them, from the conversation and, within days, from our systems.
- Block anyone. A blocked person cannot add you, invite you or find you, and they are not told.
- Disappearing messages. Whoever runs a group can have messages erase themselves after 1, 7 or 30 days.
What this does not hide. We can see who is in which group and when messages are sent, though not what they say. And until members can compare keys with each other in person, a feature we are building, you are trusting that our site hands out the right keys.
Not yet an app. Labora runs from our website, even when it sits on your Home Screen. That means the code that locks and unlocks your messages comes from our site each time you open it. If a government forced us to, or someone broke into our systems, that code could be changed to take your keys. This is a risk from the state or a serious attacker, not from a partner at home. Our app store version is the last step that closes this gap, and we will tell you when it is closed.
