Question 1

Is vanish end-to-end encrypted?

Accepted Answer

Yes. All chat traffic is encrypted with MLS (RFC 9420, via OpenMLS compiled to WebAssembly) using the ciphersuite MLS_128_DHKEMX25519_AES128GCM_SHA256_Ed25519. Files are encrypted client-side with AES-256-GCM before upload. Display names, receipts, and call signaling travel only inside the encrypted channel.

Question 2

What can the vanish server see?

Accepted Answer

Only metadata: room ids, hashed auth tokens, ciphertext frames with sizes and timing, member counts, and IP addresses. It never sees message content, names, filenames, read receipts, or call media. This is stated plainly: metadata is not hidden, content is never visible.

Question 3

Do I need an account to use vanish?

Accepted Answer

No. There are no accounts, no cookies, no analytics, and no third-party scripts. You pick a display name per room; it is only ever transmitted encrypted.

Question 4

What happens when a room expires or is destroyed?

Accepted Answer

The server deletes the room record, message buffer, encrypted group state, and file blobs immediately and irreversibly, and live clients are disconnected. Cryptographically, any ciphertext a misbehaving server secretly kept is useless without keys that only ever existed in members' browser memory.

Question 5

How do invites work?

Accepted Answer

The invite secret lives in the URL fragment (after #), which browsers never send over the network. Anyone with the link is an authorized member by design, so share it over a channel you trust. Joins are always visible to the room.

Question 6

Do calls reveal my IP address?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Group calls are peer-to-peer WebRTC, so every call participant learns the IP addresses of the others. That is inherent to keeping the server out of the media path. Text and files reveal your IP only to the server.

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