How Your Messages Are Protected
Last updated: 29 October 2026
We believe privacy should be simple to understand. You should not need a degree in cryptography or computer science to know who can read your private messages.
What does "End-to-End Encrypted" mean?
Think of sending a letter through the postal service:
With normal email or ordinary chat apps, you hand an open postcard to the mail carrier. The mail carrier, the sorting office, and the server can easily glance at what you wrote along the way.
With end-to-end encryption, imagine placing your letter inside a sturdy steel box and locking it with a heavy padlock before leaving home. You give the box to the courier. The courier carries the heavy box across town, but they do not have the key. Only your friend waiting on the other end holds the matching key. When they receive the box, they unlock it and read your letter.
In Loamz Chat, your phone or computer puts that lock on every message, picture, and voice note before it leaves your device. Our servers act like the courier: we deliver the locked box, but we have no way to unlock it or see what is inside.
What can we see, and what can we NOT see?
Here is an honest, plain-English breakdown of what our servers see:
| What the server CAN see (Metadata) | What the server CANNOT see (Content) |
|---|---|
| Who is in each chat room (your email and name) | The text of your messages (never seen by the server) |
| The time each message was sent | Your photos and shared files (scrambled before upload) |
| The size of each message or file in bytes | Your voice notes and audio clips (scrambled before upload) |
| Your Internet IP address when connecting | Your profile photo inside chats (sent as an encrypted message) |
| The web address to wake your phone for notifications | Your emoji reactions and replies |
| The reason you typed when asking to join the beta | Your private encryption keys (stay sealed on your device) |
| What you search for inside your local chat history |
How do multiple devices and backups work?
Each phone or computer you use has its own separate encryption keys.
Adding a new device: When you link a second phone or computer, other members in your existing chats add your new device's key to the room. Because end-to-end encryption protects past messages, your new device can only read messages sent after it was added. It cannot read earlier conversation history.
Bringing old history to a new device: The only way to bring your past conversation history onto a new device is by restoring an encrypted backup file. You can create it in Settings, Backup and devices. A backup is always sealed on your device with a secret only you hold: a recovery code the app makes for you (you save it once, and later backups are one tap), or a passphrase you choose. You can keep it as a file, or in your own Google Drive: your device sends the sealed backup straight to your Drive and it never passes through us.
What happens if you lose your phone?
If you still have another linked device: Your other device continues to work and receives new messages. To bring past history onto a replacement phone, you restore from a backup file.
If you lose your only device and have a backup file: You can set up a new device, restore your backup with your recovery code or passphrase, and recover your old messages.
If you lose your only device and do NOT have a backup file: Your past messages cannot be recovered. Even our engineers cannot restore them for you, because only your lost device held the decryption keys. This is the honest reality of true privacy.
Stories, AI helpers and your own drive
Stories are encrypted messages to the people you chat with, shown for 24 hours. We cannot read them.
Chats with an AI helper are not end-to-end encrypted. To answer you, the helper has to read what you write, so it is stored on our server and sent to an AI provider. You can pause all your agents, or hide AI features, in Settings, Privacy.
A backup in your own drive is sealed on your device with your recovery code or passphrase first, so the drive cannot read it either.
What does our "Beta" label mean?
We want to be completely honest about where we are:
Real encryption is live: Loamz Chat uses OpenMLS (RFC 9420), an open, modern internet security standard.
Not yet audited by an outside firm: Our system has been reviewed by our internal team, but it has not yet completed a formal audit by an independent third-party cybersecurity firm.
Until an independent audit is completed and any findings are closed, we describe Loamz Chat as a beta preview.
What do we NOT protect against?
No security system can protect against everything. To keep you safe, here are things end-to-end encryption cannot stop:
An unlocked phone in someone else's hands: If someone physically takes your phone while it is unlocked, they can read what is on your screen. Always protect your device with a PIN, fingerprint, or password.
The person you are talking to: Once someone receives your message, they can take a screenshot, copy the text, or show it to someone else. Only chat with people you know and trust.
AI helpers you choose to use: If you add an AI helper to a chat, or talk to one, that helper becomes a member of the room. It receives keys so it can read messages and write helpful answers. If you do not want an AI agent to see your conversation, do not add one to that room.