What is Confide?

Confide is a confidential messenger. It allows you to have honest, unfiltered, off-the-record conversations. It allows you to speak freely, without the risk of what you say being forwarded on or permanently stored, just like when you’re talking in person.

How does it work?

It’s really simple. Receive messages from your friends and colleagues, “wand” over the words with your finger or mouse to read them, and watch them disappear without a trace when you’re done. They’re gone for good — no forwarding, no printing and no archiving.

How did the idea come about?

It’s actually a funny story. A short while ago, co-founder Howard Lerman emailed Jon Brod asking for a reference for someone who used to work for him. As most people do, Jon emailed back saying “I’ll call you”. Since they were both busy executives, it took them six days to actually synch up via phone. When they finally did they commented that “there had to be a better way”. This was the “a-ha” moment for Confide.

They then spent nights and weekends building the app, assembling the team and creating the plan.

What are good use cases for Confide?

Any time you want to have honest, unfiltered, confidential conversations. We think there are three primary cases:

Anytime you send an email or text saying “Confidential — don’t forward” Anytime you respond to an email or text with “I’ll call you” Anytime you say “Can you send me your personal email; I’d prefer this conversation not be on work servers”

More specifically, common use cases include: Job referrals, HR issues, deal discussions, and even some good-natured office gossip.

Off-the-record conversations happen all the time in the offline world — phone calls, hallway discussions, meet-ups, grabbing lunch or coffee. We are bringing this offline experience online, in a fast, easy and efficient way.

Why are you doing this?

We think the concept of the digital permanent record is crazy. Why should all of our online communication be around forever, with copies of things being spewed and stored in people’s inboxes and the Cloud? Imagine if everything you ever SAID (spoken words) were stored like that and the person you said it to had a copy of it. We think this is fundamentally broken and we set out to fix it. We created Confide to bring off-the-record professional communication to the digital world. Honestly, we built Confide for ourselves. We enjoyed using it privately, and wanted to bring it to the world.

Do you support photos, videos, documents and voice messages? What about group messaging?

Yes and yes. Confide supports text, photos, videos, documents and voice messages. You can also send Confide messages to one person or multiple recipients.

How secure is this and do messages really disappear?

We employ end-to-end encryption to ensure conversations remain confidential and are private to you. Even we at Confide cannot decrypt or see any messages. Yes, after messages are read once they disappear.

How does it prevent screenshots?

Screenshots have the potential of making the impermanent permanent. Confide prevents screenshots with our patent-pending ScreenShield technology.

For extra privacy on iOS and Android, our patented reading experience ensures that only one line of the message is unveiled at a time and that the sender’s name is not simultaneously visible.

ScreenShield for iOS is a new technology which is only supported when the message recipient is using a recent version of the Confide app. But don’t worry, older versions of Confide are still screenshot-protected by our reading experience.

Has Confide undergone a third-party security audit?

Yes, we periodically undergo third-party security audits. You can see an executive summary of one of our audits here.

On what platforms is Confide available?

Confide is currently available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, Mac and Siri.

On iPhone and iPad, video is only supported on iOS 10.3 or later.

What is Confide for iMessage?

Confide for iMessage allows you to send and receive Confide messages from the comfort and convenience of iMessage. Messages are encrypted, private and self-destructing, like regular Confide messages. And it’s completely frictionless – you don’t even need to create an account. Download Confide for iMessage (requires iOS 10 or later)

Confide messages sent via iMessage will not appear in the main Confide app, and vice versa. These are two separate Confide apps and experiences. Due to technical limitations imposed by Apple on iMessage apps, Confide for iMessage does not offer the same level of screenshot protection as the main app.

I need help with Confide for iMessage. What should I do?

For problems enabling, downloading, accessing and using Confide for iMessage, please consult Use iMessage apps on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

For additional inquiries, please e-mail support@getconfide.com