Because of how GHOSTFACE is built, there are some things support genuinely cannot do. It's worth knowing which is which:
No. Message history lives only on your device, encrypted. There is no server-side copy for us to restore, which is the same property that stops anyone else from reading your messages.
If you saved your recovery phrase, you can restore your identity on a new device — your alias and the ability to be reached — but not past conversations.
It's a 24-word phrase that encodes a private key. GHOSTFACE uses separate phrases for two different things — your identity and your wallet. They are not interchangeable, and using the wrong one won't work.
Write them down offline. A phrase kept only in a screenshot, a notes app or a cloud backup is as exposed as that service is. Nobody at GHOSTFACE will ever ask you for a recovery phrase — anyone who does is attacking you.
That's the disappearing-message timer working as intended. It's always on and defaults to 1 hour. You can change it per conversation to anything between 5 seconds and 7 days.
Both sides of a conversation see the same timer, and expiry happens on both devices.
Aliases are 3–20 characters and may contain only letters, digits and underscores. They're matched exactly, so check for a typo, and note that aliases which look similar are not treated as the same.
The other person also needs to have registered before you can start an encrypted conversation with them.
Worth checking, in order:
If it still fails, tell us your device model, OS version and roughly when it happened.
No. You register with an alias you choose. We don't ask for your name, phone number or email address, and we don't upload your contacts.
What we do hold is set out in the privacy policy — it's a short list.
It's non-custodial. Keys are generated on your device and never sent to us. We can't move your funds, freeze them, or restore them.
If you lose both your device and your wallet recovery phrase, the funds are gone permanently. That's not a policy we can make an exception to — the keys genuinely don't exist anywhere else.
Subscriptions purchased through an app store are managed there — in your Apple ID or Google Play account settings — not in the app.
Deleting the app removes everything held on your device. To have your alias, public keys and push token removed from our servers, email us from the app or write to support@ghostface.co.nz and tell us the alias.
If you believe you've found a vulnerability, please report it privately to support@ghostface.co.nz rather than posting it publicly, and give us a reasonable window to fix it before disclosure. Include enough detail to reproduce the issue.
Report abuse to support@ghostface.co.nz. Please note we cannot see message content, so include whatever context you can — the alias involved and what happened.