/05Guide & background
Guide
Background on security, encryption and digital policy. Honest and easy to follow, without the jargon.
Secure passwords and password managers, without folklore
Most password rules you know have officially been abolished: no character-class requirement, no change every three months. A calm look at what NIST and the BSI ask for instead, why three dice-rolled words beat P@ssw0rd, what the BSI found in ten password managers, and where we at PriChat get it wrong ourselves.
Read more →Encrypted backup: how a cloud backup can defeat encryption
Encryption protects your chats, a backup can open them again, often through your contact's unencrypted backup. A calm look at why the default case is the problem, what an FBI document shows, and why there is no cloud backup at PriChat at all.
Read more →SIM swapping: how attackers take over accounts via your number
A SIM swap does not hack your phone, it hacks your carrier: criminals get your number moved to their SIM card and intercept whatever arrives by SMS. A calm look at how the attack works, the signs that give it away, and which protections actually help.
Read more →Passkeys: signing in without a password, explained
Passkeys sound like marketing, but there is solid cryptography behind them. A calm look at the key pair, why phishing fails against origin binding, how synced and device-bound passkeys differ, and how we use them at PriChat as a key vault rather than just a login.
Read more →Client-side scanning: how it defeats encryption
With on-device scanning the encryption stays mathematically intact and practically pointless. A calm look at how it works, why fourteen leading cryptographers advise against it, and why Apple shut down its own system.
Read more →Switching devices: what happens to your encrypted chats
Moving to a new device reveals how seriously a messenger takes encryption. Why your history stays behind, and why that is not a bug.
Read more →Chat control 2026: what was decided on 9 July
On 9 July the EU Parliament extended voluntary chat control with a procedural trick. I calmly explain what was decided, how 1.0 differs from 2.0, and what it means for your encrypted messages.
Read more →Metadata: what your messenger knows about you
Who talks to whom, when and how often: metadata often reveals more than the text itself. What a typical messenger server stores, and why that row is missing at ours.
Read more →A messenger without a phone number: why it matters
Your phone number sits in your mobile contract, in hundreds of address books and almost certainly in a data breach. Why it makes a poor messenger account.
Read more →End-to-end encryption, explained simply
Almost every messenger advertises it, hardly anyone knows what it means. The one sentence that identifies real end-to-end encryption, and what it cannot do.
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