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Questions and answers

The questions people ask about Verus

Whether it needs your phone number, whether anybody can find you, how proving who you are works and how you take it back, what would be handed over if a court asked, and how it stands against the messengers you already use. Including the answers that do not flatter us.

What Verus is

What is Verus?

Verus is a private messaging app for iPhone, Android and Mac. You send messages, photographs, video and files, and you make groups, the way you would in any messenger. What is different is what it asks of you: there is no phone number, no email address and no profile, because there is nothing to sign up to. You get an address that is made on your own device, and the only people who can use it are people you have let in.

Is Verus free?

Yes, and nothing that makes it private is behind the price. The encryption, the absent directory, contact requests, on device translation, disappearing messages, screen protection and identity verification are all in the free tier and always will be. The subscription buys capacity, which is what costs money to provide: more devices, larger files, and longer for an undelivered message to wait.

Do I need a phone number to use Verus?

No. Verus never asks for a phone number, and there is no field in the database to put one in. The account table is published live at the deployment endpoint and you can read for yourself that it holds no phone, no email, no name and no last seen time. This is the single biggest difference between Verus and WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram, all three of which register you against a number.

Do I need an email address or a real name?

No. There is no sign up of any kind. Opening the app creates an address on the device in about a second, and no part of that process asks who you are. If you later want somebody to know who you are, that is a separate thing you choose to do for one conversation.

Can people find me on Verus?

No, because there is no directory to find you in. Nobody can search a number, a username or an email address and arrive at you. The only way anybody reaches you is with a code or a link you handed them yourself, and that code works once and stops working an hour later.

How does somebody start a conversation with me?

You give them a single use code, usually by showing them a square to scan or sending them a link. They use it to send you a request, and nothing lands on your phone until you answer it. You can allow it, decline it or block the address outright, and you can give the person a name that only you ever see.

Identity and verification

Can I stay anonymous on Verus?

Yes, indefinitely, and that is the default rather than a mode you have to find. Your address is a cryptographic string that was never assigned to you by anybody, so there is no record connecting it to a person unless you make one.

How does identity verification work on Verus?

When you want somebody to know it is really you, you ask Confrmo, a separate identity service, to attest to it. Confrmo checks the account holder approved it and, where it says so, that a live face matched an identity document it had already checked. What comes back is a signed claim with an expiry on it, and that claim travels alongside your messages. The address underneath does not change, so verifying does not turn your anonymous address into a named account.

Can I take a verification back?

Yes. A claim can be revoked, and it expires on its own regardless. That is the point of the design: proving who you are to one person for one conversation should not be a permanent property of your account. Anybody checking a revoked claim is told it was revoked rather than told it is invalid, because a revoked claim still carries a valid signature and a verifier that cannot tell the difference is not telling you much.

What does the verified badge actually mean?

That Confrmo told Verus an account holder approved the claim, and, where Confrmo asserts it, that their live face was matched against an identity document Confrmo checked. It is a statement about an identity check that happened, not a recommendation to trust somebody. Nothing on this site claims a verified person is a good person.

Can somebody check a verification without asking me?

Anybody holding a claim reference can check it against the deployment that issued it, from their own browser, with no key and no account. The verifier on this website does exactly that and the answer distinguishes live, expired, revoked, forged and unknown. The check tells them about the claim and nothing about you beyond what the claim already said.

Privacy and security

Is Verus end to end encrypted?

Yes, on every message, in every conversation, with no setting to turn it off and no unencrypted mode. It uses the Signal protocol double ratchet over X25519 key exchange with AES-256-GCM, which are standard constructions used the way they are meant to be used. A new cryptographic primitive inside a messenger is a liability rather than a feature.

Does Verus store my messages?

Only while one is waiting to be delivered, and only as ciphertext it has no key for. Once a message is collected it is deleted. There is no archive, no backup of your conversations and no export, so there is no copy of a conversation sitting on a server five years from now.

Does Verus know who I am talking to?

No. There is no sender column in the message table, so the relay holds no record of who sent anything, and groups are assembled on the devices rather than on the server, so the relay never learns a group exists at all. You do not have to take that on trust: the schema is read live from the running server by your own browser on the technology page.

What would Verus have to hand over if a court compelled it?

What it holds, which is an address, a public key, the day the address was created, and any ciphertext still waiting to be delivered. It cannot hand over message content, because it has no key. It cannot hand over your contacts, your groups or who you spoke to, because it never recorded any of it. It is better that you know that now than discover it later.

What independent assurance covers Verus?

The service runs on Oracle Cloud in London, which holds ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 and 27701, SOC 1, 2 and 3, CSA STAR and C5 for its infrastructure, with live standby copies on IONOS, whose data centres are ISO 27001 certified. Those are the providers' certifications covering their half of the system. Verus is compliant with UK GDPR. For its own half the stronger evidence is that the central privacy claim can be checked directly against the running server rather than believed, at api.verusapp.co.uk/v1/deployment. An independent audit of that half is on the roadmap.

Can somebody screenshot my messages?

On Android the operating system refuses the capture outright. On iOS no application is given a way to stop a screenshot, so Verus detects one and tells the other person it happened. Screen recording and mirroring are blocked on both. Photographs and files are stripped of the location they were taken and the camera that took them before they leave your device.

Using it

Where can I download Verus?

The Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple and can be installed from this site today. Android is on Google Play now. The iPhone app is built and running on real handsets against the live deployment and is with Apple for review. The early access list on this site exists to tell you the day it is in the App Store, and it holds an email address and a date, nothing else.

Can I use Verus on more than one device?

Yes. The same conversations follow you across every device you have added, and each device holds its own keys rather than sharing one. The free tier covers one device and the subscription covers up to five of your own. Add a second device while you still have the first: that is what carries your conversations forward.

What happens if I lose my phone?

The conversations on it are gone, and nobody can bring them back, including us. They were encrypted with keys that only ever existed on that device. This is not a support limitation that could be lifted on request; it is the property you came for, and any messenger that can restore your history to a new phone is telling you something about where your keys have been.

Can I talk to somebody who speaks another language?

Yes. Verus translates between twenty languages on the device in your hand, so you write the way you normally write and they read the way they normally read, and the conversation is never sent to a translation service to make that work. The original is kept beside the translation if you want it.

Can I make voice or video calls on Verus?

Voice calls, yes. They are proven on real phones in both directions, iPhone to Android and back, sealed on one phone and opened only on the other. The call goes through a Verus Relay, which keeps each phone's internet address from the other, passes on audio it has no key to open and keeps no record of the call. Calls reach each app as its next update is released. Video calls are coming soon.

How do I delete my Verus account?

The You tab, then Delete your account, in the app. The address is burned, the keys that made it are gone and nothing is retained against you afterwards, which is straightforward precisely because there was never a name, a number or an email attached to it. There is a page on this site listing exactly what is removed.

Compared with other apps

How is Verus different from WhatsApp?

WhatsApp registers you with a phone number. Anybody holding that number can put a message on your phone and the account is permanently attached to it. Verus never asks for a number, so there is nothing to be looked up by and no stranger who can reach you without asking first. When a conversation needs it, you can prove who you are to that one person and take the proof back afterwards.

How is Verus different from Signal?

Verus uses the Signal protocol for message encryption. The differences are the account and the identity. Signal registers you against a phone number; Verus has no field for one. Verus also lets you prove who you are when that is what the conversation needs: you switch it on for one person and take it back afterwards.

How is Verus different from Telegram?

Telegram registers you with a phone number and its ordinary cloud chats are not end to end encrypted, only its Secret Chats are, and those are per device and opt in. Every Verus conversation is end to end encrypted with no setting to change and no unencrypted mode, and no message is stored on a server once it has been delivered. Telegram is also built around being findable by username in public channels and groups, which is close to the opposite of what Verus is for.

How is Verus different from Keet?

Neither asks for a phone number. Keet uses a 24 word seed phrase as your identity, which proves you control an identity but says nothing about who holds it. Verus is built around the moment you need somebody to know it is genuinely you: anonymous by default, provable to one person when it matters and revocable afterwards. Verus relays hold a message until the other person comes online. Voice calls work now and video calls are coming soon.

How is Verus different from Session, SimpleX or Threema?

All three let you message without a phone number, using an identifier generated on the device. So does Verus. The difference is what happens next. When a conversation reaches the point where identity matters, Verus lets you prove who you are inside the conversation, with an expiry. The other side can verify it independently and you can withdraw it.

Still deciding

Do not take our word for the central claim

The one answer on this page that matters most, that the relay holds no record of who spoke to whom, is not something you have to believe. Your own browser asks the running server which columns it holds and which it declares it never holds, and prints both.

Read the live schema Compare it with what you use now

Anything not answered here: hello@verusapp.co.uk, read by the people who build it.