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Secure Messages look just like clear text messages but they are not. Instead they are a sophisticated way for writing each other and their complex architecture implies some limitations bounds:

  • There's no chat group / no chat room feature: you can send Secure Messages only to one peer at the time.
  • Exception made for BlackBerry, you can use Emoji Emoji characters to spice up your messages

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  • You cannot attach anything to a Secure Message: Secure Messages are actually text only. Binary Messages that could use attachments might come in next releases.
  • Secure Message lenght is fixed to a maximum of 160 characters. Nowadays there's no way to create longer messages. If you need to write more you have to split your text in more messages by yourself.
  • Each Secure Message has a time validity, after which it expires. Expiration means that the Secure Message content is no longer readable and it's gone for good. Instead of message content you'd rather read "Message received" or "Message sent". 
BlackBerry expired Secure MessageiPhone expired Secure MessageAndroid expired Secure Message
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Each time you send a Secure Message you can see a status icon appear on its side. Here follows an explanation of each icon along with its status name and meaning:

IconDescriptionMeaning Timeouts and general behaviour

Sending Message

PrivateGSM is actually trying to send the Secure Message to its recipient via PrivateServer

If there is some network issue, then PrivateGSM starts the retry procedure: it tries to send 5 times the message to PrivateServer. If it fails at the fifth try (5 * TLSTimeout = 60 secs), then the message remains in the client queue waiting for one of the following triggers:

    • The user can connect to Sip Server
    • The client sends a SIP KeepAlive to the server
    • The user sends another message

If more than 12 hours passed and the message is still in client queue waiting to be sent, then the message expires: a "Send error" notification is fired by PrivateGSM and the message is removed from sender queue

 

Message Enqueued

PrivateGSM was able to send the Secure Message which now is in the queue of PrivateServer encrypted. PrivateServer tries to deliver it to its destination.

If delivery is not possible because the peer if offline, PrivateServer retries as soon as recipient registers for up to an expiration period (72h), before removing them definitely from the database. If the user is online but there is a network issue, the server try to deliver the message 5 times every 30 seconds. If at the fifth attempt the network issue is still present, the retry procedure will be stopped and the message will be sent when the user will return online.
Message Delivered

PrivateServer was able to deliver the Secure Message to its recipient. The message could be read as not.

None
Error sending Message

This status is a fall back for any other one and it's triggered both by timeouts and error responses.

None