privsend — how it works

Suomeksi

privsend lets you send a secret — a password, a private note, or some files — so that only the person you give the link to can open it, just once, and then it is gone. Everything is encrypted on your own device before it leaves, so we never see what is inside.

Sending a secret

Write your secret — a note, a password, anything — in the Secret box. It is encrypted right here in your browser (up to about 256 KB; a live counter shows the room left). We only ever receive the scrambled version.
Add files if you like (optional) — up to 10 files of any kind, images or documents, 25 MB in total. They are encrypted the same way.
Choose how long it lives — if no one opens it, it destroys itself after 1 hour, 1 day, or 7 days.
Add a passphrase (optional, extra protection) — a word or phrase the recipient must also type to open the secret. Send it by a different route than the link.
Create the link. The key that unlocks the secret lives in the part of the link after the “#”. Browsers never send that part to any server — so we never receive the key and cannot read your secret, even in principle.
Send the link yourself. Copy it and pass it to your recipient however you like — message, email, in person. privsend does not send or deliver your link or secret for you, so we never learn who the recipient is. If you set a passphrase, send it a different way.

You also get a status link — a private receipt, just for you. Keep it; it only ever tells you whether the secret has been read, and can never reveal what was in it.

Opening a secret

If someone sent you a privsend link, open it and you will see a short page saying a secret is waiting. Nothing has happened yet — simply landing there does not open or destroy anything. When you are ready and able to save what you receive, click Reveal.

The secret is fetched and destroyed on our server in that same moment, so a link works only once.
You need the whole link (and the passphrase, if one was set). Without them, nobody can decrypt it — not you, not the sender, not us.
Text is yours to read and copy right away. Any files finish downloading within a short grace period — at most 60 minutes — and are then destroyed too.
Keep the page open until you have saved everything. Reloading or reopening the link will say “no longer available”, because by then it is genuinely gone.

And if a link is never opened at all? It self-destructs on its own, at the time the sender chose.

Why you can trust it

Encrypted on your device. Your secret is scrambled before it leaves your browser and unscrambled only in the recipient’s. We hold nothing but ciphertext.
The key never reaches us. It rides in the link’s “#” fragment, which browsers do not transmit to servers — so there is nothing on our side that could read your secret.
Reading is a deliberate act. Merely opening a link does not consume it — only a human clicking Reveal does. That is what stops mail scanners and link previews from burning a secret before your recipient arrives.

Good to keep in mind

privsend is not storage or a backup. Every secret is destroyed when it is read or when it expires — whichever comes first. Never make privsend the only copy of anything.
A mistyped or lost link or passphrase cannot be recovered — by anyone, including us. That is the design, not a fault: if we could recover it, so could someone else.

Nothing to install

privsend is a web app: nothing to download, no app store, and no account — no username, no email, no phone number, ever. It runs in any modern browser on any device, which is exactly what you want when installing an app is awkward or impossible: a work laptop, a shared computer, or a place where app stores are restricted.

If you reach for it often, you can add privsend to your home screen and open it like an ordinary app. On Android, use your browser menu’s Install app (or Add to Home screen); on iPhone or iPad, tap Share and then Add to Home Screen. It stays the same private web app — no extra permissions, and still nothing kept about you.

If you want to go further

Everything above stays true: privsend is a web app, and you never have to install anything. But a web app has one honest limitation. The code that does the encrypting is delivered by our server each time you visit — we publish that code, so tampering with it would be detectable, but only if someone actually checks.

There is now a browser extension that removes the need to check. It is the same client you would otherwise load from the web, except installed on your device and versioned: the encryption runs from your own copy and is never fetched again. Sending and opening secrets both work from it, and our server only ever sends it encrypted data.

Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi — install from the Chrome Web Store. A Firefox version is under review and will be linked here once published.

It is free, entirely optional, and changes nothing about how privsend works for the people you send to — they do not need it. If you want to know exactly what it proves, and how to check any of this for yourself, see how to verify this is safe.

＋ Send a secret

Want the finer detail, or the fine print? See our privacy notice and terms.