Bamaja · Secret Chat
A short guide to sending a private message inside a message that looks like nothing at all.
The idea
WhatsApp already encrypts your messages. So does Signal. That protects what you wrote — but anyone looking at your phone still sees that you sent something you did not want read.
Secret Chat works the other way round. Your real message is turned into a block of ordinary chatter, the kind of thing people send every day. You send that. It goes through WhatsApp, SMS, Telegram, email, anywhere at all. Someone reading over your shoulder finds nothing worth asking about.
Only the person holding your conversation code can turn it back.
You type this:
You send this instead:
It is longer than what you wrote, and it rambles a little. That is the trade. Nobody screenshots a rambling message and asks what it means.
First time
There is nothing to download. If you want it on your home screen, use your browser's Add to Home screen — after that it opens like any app, and it still opens when your data is off.
Type it twice. This locks what is stored on your phone, so if someone picks up your handset they cannot read your conversations.
Nobody can reset it. There is no email, no SMS, no support line that can get you back in. Forget the passcode and everything on that phone is gone. Choose something you will still know next month.
Secret Chat is invitation only. Enter the username and password you were given — once, not every time. If you were not given one, ask whoever sent you here.
This is not the same as your passcode, and it does not let anyone read your messages. It only says who is allowed to use the service.
The important part
A conversation needs a code that only you and one other person hold. Get this step right and everything else takes care of itself.
Tap Start a conversation, choose I will give the code, put in a name you will recognise, and tap Make the code. You get 24 characters in six groups:
There is no I, L, O or U in it, so nothing can be confused with 1 or 0.
They tap Start a conversation, choose I was given one, and type the code. Upper or lower case, spaces or no spaces — it does not matter.
Hand the phone over, or read it out on a call. A code sitting in the same WhatsApp thread is the one thing that would explain all the strange messages that come after it. Everything else about this app is designed so there is nothing to find — do not put the answer in the same place.
Both phones end up holding the same secret. It never reaches our server, and there is no copy anywhere else. That is the whole point — but it also means that if both of you lose it, that conversation is finished. Nobody can bring it back.
Every day
Open the conversation and write in the box at the bottom. Up to 400 characters. Shorter is better — the cover message grows with what you write, and a very long one starts to look odd.
Give it a moment. The app shows you the ordinary-looking message it built, laid out the way it will appear in a chat, so you can judge it before anyone else sees it.
Tap Copy or Send it, then paste into WhatsApp, SMS, wherever you were going to send it anyway.
Do not fix the spelling. Do not cut the last line. Do not add "hello" in front. Every word carries part of your real message, and changing one of them makes the whole thing unreadable at the other end.
In Settings you can pick what the cover messages sound like — Chatting, Work, Family or Market — so it fits the thread you are sending into. You can also choose between Shorter and More natural. More natural reads closer to a real person but runs about twice as long.
If the two of you have picked different settings, nothing breaks. The reading phone works it out by itself and remembers.
Every day
In WhatsApp, hold the message and copy it. Take all of it, first word to last.
Bottom left of the conversation screen. Paste what you copied.
The real message appears, and it stays in your thread so you do not have to do this twice.
Work down this list. It is almost always the first one.
Being straight with you
Any tool that tells you it is perfect is selling something. Here is where this one ends.
Your phone talks to our service to build the cover text, and you sign in to do it. So the service knows that your username asked for cover text at a particular time — and that is all it knows. It cannot see what you wrote, who you wrote to, or which conversation it belonged to.
Being plain about the trade: this was open to anyone at first, which meant we knew nothing at all about who was using it. Accounts were added so it could be kept to invited people and so misuse could be stopped. That means there is now a record that you used it. If the fact that you use a tool like this is itself the danger, this is not the right tool.
It reads like someone typing carelessly. A person scrolling past will think nothing of it. Somebody who sits down with it and studies the writing may well notice it is strange. We are improving this, and we will not pretend it is already solved.
The encryption underneath is the ordinary, well-tested kind. The part that hides it inside everyday sentences is new work, and it has not been through outside review. Treat it as good cover, not as armour.
The passcode protects a locked phone. It does not protect one taken out of your hand while you are using it.
Hiding messages is ordinary and legal in most places. In some countries it is not, and in some situations refusing to hand over a key is itself an offence. That is on you to check.
Questions people ask
Remember these three
Bamaja Integrated Online Services Ltd · Lagos
This guide is stored on your phone after the first time you open it.